“These series with the Liberty and the Fever is becoming a good rivalry for the league and for the eastern conference,” forward Ebony Hoffman said after the game. “I really think we always have good games against each other, it always comes down to the wire. We have had several overtime games already, and it always goes down to the wire every year. Every year it is a great game and we come in ready to play and ready to fight it out.”

Forward Tamika Catchings had a double-double and was one of the key offensive threats countering every New York scoring threat, as she tallied 22 points and 10 rebounds to go along with seven assists. Nine of Catchings points came in the overtime frame for the Fever. Guard Katie Douglas followed with 21 points with four rebounds and four assists. Hoffman was a strong presence for Indiana all evening long cashing in on 15 points and grabbing four rebounds.

“It was a huge win for us today, “Catching said after the game. “When we went into overtime I really did not want us to lose this game. This is the time I have to step-up and help the team win the game. Everyone hit their shots, the defense really stepped up and it was a great overall performance.”

New York, whose three-game winning streak was snapped today, was led by guard Cappie Pondexter who established a career-high 40 points, while also dishing out seven assist and grabbing six rebounds. Guard Leilani Mitchell scored 15 points and forward Janel McCarville added 12 to lead the Liberty offensively.

“To me it’s not about the points, it’s about getting wins,” Pondexter said after the game. “It stinks because we’re definitely in the playoff race, we are trying to get a spot in the playoffs in the east and we let this one get by us today and it was disappointing. But we need to let it go and we need to move on.”

The combination of missed buckets and some key Indiana defensive plays led to the Liberty loss today.  As New York was 31-77 from the field in shooting today, the team shot 14-33 from the field in the fourth quarter which could have helped to propel them to the victory.

“They made some though shots down the stretch,” Mitchell said of the game. “They played some great defense and put a lot of pressure on us. They did some different things with their defense that kind of threw us off a little that we don’t really see too often.”

Indiana meanwhile had solid shooting all evening long as Catchings was on fire in the fourth quarter. Starting with a key defensive rebound at the 7:20 mark of the fourth quarter, she would hit a two point bucket at the 6:19 mark to give the Fever the 62-60 lead.  An offensive rebound which was followed by a jumper in the paint by forward Janelle McCarville made the score 62-62 at the 5:22 mark.

At the 5:02 mark the Fever struck back with a good jumper by forward Jessica Moore which gave them the 64-62 lead. New York answered right back in a game that featured nine lead changes with a driving lay-up by Cappie Pondexter at the 4:52 mark, which tied the two teams up 64-64. Catchings would break that tie with a driving lay-up at the 4:27 mark to only have that lead cut again by New York and a jumper by McCarville making it 66-66.

Leilani Mitchell would give the Liberty the three point lead with a beautiful shot on the outside arc at the 3:14 mark, the Liberty would add on to their lead as Pondexter cashed in on a fade away jump shot making it 71-68 at the 2:25 mark. A Pondexter jump shot at the 1:05 mark made the score 73-70, but Catchings would respond with a huge three-pointer with 50 seconds left to tie the two teams up. In the game tonight the Fever and the Liberty combined for 13 ties as the crowd of 9,508 tried to will the Liberty to the victory.

Both Pondexter and Catchings had last minute shots in that quarter to seal the deal and get the victory, but neither player was able to cash in as the two teams went into overtime. Catchings would however start overtime with the first five points for Indiana to give them the 78-75 lead. Katie Douglas would drain a jump shot at the 3:34 mark to give the Fever the 80-75 lead. Free-throws and a rebound for Catchings would eventually seal the deal and get the Fever the hard earned victory along with first place in the East Coast conference.

“The east is so tough and we have two teams like New York and Chicago to move up the ladder and you can see why it is so tough to move up the ladder,” Fever head coach Lin Dunn said after the game. “It was a hard fought game against a very good team today.”

The Liberty will try to claw their way back up the standings will have a very tough road game on Tuesday. They do so against the fourth-seeded Connecticut Sun, the game which will be televised on the ESPN 2 channel is slated to tip-off at 8:00 p.m.
“We definitely need to fight harder and try to close out the game against Connecticut.” Pondexter said. “There is still room for us to make the playoffs we just have to close-out games when we have the opportunity.”

The Jets? Without the fanfare of Brett Favre and their December collapse, they will have to go on the road for their two prime time affairs – an ESPN Monday Night Football game at Miami (October 12) and in Montreal for what is considered a Buffalo Bills home game on Thursday, December 3 on the NFL Network.

For the sideline boss of Gang Green, finally seeing where and when his team will be was a sign of good things. “We got the schedule today and I am fired up about the coming season,” Rex Ryan said. “This will be my first season as a head coach and the schedule is filled with challenges, but our coaching staff and players have been working hard and I know that we will be ready.”

On the plate in Week One for the Jets is a road game versus the Texans, the first time in 22 years that they have opened up the season in the big state. Back then it was the Houston Oilers on the short end of a 20-0 score at the ‘Eighth Wonder of the World,’ otherwise known as the Astrodome.

The home opener a week later will bring a familiar foe into East Rutherford as the Patriots make the trip south for the fourth consecutive year. Things do not get any easier as the Tennessee Titans are up next and they will be looking to avenge the Jets’ Week 12 win last year that snapped their 10-game winning streak. Other notable games on the schedule are at Indianapolis (December 27) and – barring any post-season home games – the last dance at the old building on January 3 versus Cincinnati.

In 2010, both teams will move into the brand new stadium right next door and the Giants would love to close out an era with a better showing than last year’s Divisional Round playoff loss to the Eagles. They open things up on September 13 at home versus the Redskins then go on a three-game road trip to Dallas, Tampa Bay and Kansas City.

Big Blue will have the evening game on the NFL Network on Thanksgiving Day at Denver then have three division games after that, at home versus Dallas and Philadelphia and at Washington. A tough stretch, indeed, something not lost on head coach Tom Coughlin, who noted the advantage of having the bye in Week 10.

“We play nine games before the bye – I think that’s better for us,” he said to reporters, commenting on the early Week 4 week off in 2008. “The bye gives the players, I think, an opportunity to play a long stretch against high-quality opponents and then have a little break.”

For the second consecutive season, the G-Men finish up at Minnesota (January 3) and will look to springboard into the playoffs on a higher note than last year when they lost by a field goal at the final gun.

Of course, the NFL’s flexible scheduling in the season’s final seven weeks make all of those games tentative and officially considered “To Be Announced” for a starting time. Depending on where both teams are at that point in the season will determine their schedule, with NBC getting the opportunity to switch their night game to show a better match-up than what was put on the charts months in advance.

If Ryan and Coughlin’s troops do their jobs, both teams may end up with more national games than the seven planned now. First things first, though.

The game will be sponsored by State Farm and will feature a pre-game ceremony to retire the jersey number (10) of former guard Craig “Speedy” Claxton, who played at Hofstra from 1996-2000. Claxton is one of only six players in school history to score 2,000 career points (2,015) and is the program’s all-time leader in both assists (660) and steals (288) and was a two-time Player of the Year selection in the America East Conference (1998, 2000). He was also named the 2000 winner of the Haggerty Award, given to the top player in the Metropolitan New York area, after leading Hofstra to an America East Conference championship and its first NCAA Division I tournament berth in 23 years.

Hofstra is riding a four-game winning streak in which it used plenty of late-game heroics to pull out some dramatic victories. The Pride has trailed in the final minute in three of those four wins, and has used baskets in the final two seconds to win each of the last two contests. On Saturday, sophomore guard Charles Jenkins (Queens. NY) went coast-to-coast to score with 1.9 seconds left and give the Pride a 69-68 win over James Madison. On Wednesday, with the score tied, junior guard Tony Dennison (Long Island City, NY) stepped in and stole a pass in the closing seconds, and senior forward Arminas Urbutis (Kaunas, Lithuania) scored on a put-back at the buzzer to give Hofstra an 80-78 win.

The streak started on Jan. 17, when Hofstra trailed by one against Northeastern with a minute to play, before Jenkins forced Huskies guard Matt Janning into a wild miss, then made two foul shots to put the Pride ahead to stay as it captured a 57-52 victory. It remains Northeastern’s only conference loss this season, as the Huskies took over sole possession of first place at 9-1 with a win at VCU on Tuesday, which dropped the Rams to 15-6 overall and 8-2 in conference play.

Overall this season, Hofstra is 9-1 in games decided by five points or less, including five wins in which it trailed in the final minute (the Pride’s first two wins of the year over Western Michigan and East Tennessee State also came after Hofstra trailed in the last minute of play). Jenkins put Hofstra to stay in the first four of them, as well as breaking a tie with 1:19 to play in a win over Manhattan on Nov. 29, and tied the game against UNC Wilmington with a foul shot with 34 seconds to go before Urbutis scored the winning points at the buzzer.

One of the other storyline for the Pride in the last week has been the emergence of sophomore guard Nathaniel Lester (Brooklyn, NY) as a secondary scoring option to Jenkins. Lester had a season-high 11 points in the win over James Madison on Saturday, then passed that with 18 points in Wednesday’s win over UNC Wilmington (his double-team of point guard Chad Tomko also helped produce the turnover that led to the game-winner).

Hofstra and VCU met earlier this season in Richmond, with the Rams coming away with a 68-60 win on its home floor. Senior guard Eric Maynor, the defending CAA Player of the Year, led the way for VCU with 21 points, while Larry Sanders added 16 points and 13 rebounds.

The Rams were the preseason favorites to win the CAA after back-to-back regular season titles in each of the last two years. Everything revolves around Maynor, who averages a CAA-best 22.7 points and 6.0 assists per game. Sanders averages 10.9 points, 7.4 rebounds and a CAA-best 2.7 blocks, while sophomore guard Joey Rodriguez is also in double figures at 10.3 points per game. The Rams’ primary weakness is depth as only eight players are in their current rotation.