Final score: Storm 54 – Mercury 56 (L) (9-16)

Attendance | 5278

Anthem Xtra Notes | Of course

Anthem High Note | Hit it

Anthem Style | Dido

Fan Noise | Great for 3:30 minutes

Signs | A couple

Fan Psyche | We were robbed

Halftime | Amazing jumproping

I’m not going to bore you with a rehash of how ugly this game got to be during the first 36 and a half minutes. I’m sure that all of the major sports news outlets that bother to cover the WNBA will revel in how long the Storm went before getting a field goal (6 minutes), that the Storm only scored 30 points in the first 30 minutes of play, or that nearly half of the Storm’s total points came from the free throw line (26 points out of 54).

Instead, I am going to focus on the best part of the game – the last 3 and a half minutes.

In 3 and a half minutes, the Storm play monster defense, hit some key shots that normally don’t go down, and wipe away a seemingly insurmountable 11 point lead to tie the game with 52 seconds left. What may have been another frustrating loss becomes a great game.

The end of this game has to be given to Michelle Marciniak. True, she doesn’t do all of it on her own. Lauren has a couple vital rebounds, Semeka hits a field goal, and everyone hits their free throws. But 3M has to be given the credit for leading this comeback. She sparks the defense with steals and being thoroughly disruptive. She drives the lane and gets the basket or fouls (we’ll come back to this). She is slapping at the ball, taking hits in the chest and keeping Phoenix from running out the clock.

So we are tied at 54 with about 19 seconds on the clock. The Mercury have the ball and dribble the clock down to about 10 and dump it inside. Gillom (we think) hits the lay-up with just over 5 seconds left. Before anyone can say timeout (did we have any left?), 3M is flying up the floor and goes straight to the basket. She gets floored, as does the defender. No basket, no foul, no time left. The Mercury win 56-54.

Now, as I said earlier, we come back to Michelle driving the lane and either getting the score or getting a foul. She either commits an offensive foul during the last play, or she is mugged by the defender. There is no way that a foul, one way or the other, was not committed at the end of this game. I’m sorry, but the refs have to make a call, any call, and they don’t.

It’s not so much that the Storm lose this game by two points, it’s that after pulling off another near miracle they get the game yanked away from them because the refs don’t have the guts to make a call. The team takes it pretty hard, especially 3M. Like with the last Sparks game, we hope they can take the effort they put forward in this game and focus on the good.

Notes:

Lauren scores another double double – 16 pts, 13 rebounds – along with 3 blocked shots, 2 steals and 11 for 11 from the free throw line. Again, if these aren’t Rookie of the Year numbers, I’ll eat a Lauren Jackson jersey at the end of the season.

Simone Edwards is playing incredible defense. On a defensive team, she is quickly becoming one of the standouts. Her stats don’t show it (6 rebounds, no steals, no blocks), but she is being extremely active and is really clamping down on anything coming into the key. We’re all becoming members of the Simone Zone.

In one of those it-sounded-good-in-the-meeting cross-promotion things, tonight is ‘Nsync night in the WNBA. At the door, we are offered a free ‘Nsync poster. We ask the person if we look like the ‘Nsync demographic. He says no, and so do we. Later, one “lucky” row gets a copy of the new ‘Nsync CD. This is one of the few times that we quietly repeat, “Not us, not us, not us.”

Cynthia Cooper comes unglued at one point and alternates between screaming at her players and pacing the scorer’s table in a seeming incoherent rage. Coop, you need one of those stress balls. That, or just go ahead and suit up – you know you are dying to.

Yet again, the floor is overrun with kids trying to conga with Doppler during one of the timeouts. Sooner or later, we’re going to get called for a delay of game or even a technical because the floor isn’t cleared fast enough. Tonight gets close, very close.

Lauren inadvertently has an Opals flashback and passes the ball to Trisha Fallon at one point. You can’t blame her, really. You couldn’t swing a useless ref without hitting an Australian tonight (Timms and Fallon for the Mercury and LJ for the Storm were all on the Opals last year, and Veals plays with Lauren for the Canberra Capitals – but you all knew that already).

In a postgame Q&A, Sonja and Charmin answer some questions about their college days and their off-season pursuits. One of the questions is how they were first attracted to basketball. Sonja tells the story of how when she was in the 5th grade, she was called to play in a game so that the team didn’t forfeit the game because they were down a “body.” She was called because she lived only a couple of blocks from the school. Charmin tells a story about her first point scored. When she was 4, she played in a league that awarded a point if the players were able to hit the rim with the ball even if they didn’t make the basket. She says that she was very excited to get her first point, but can’t remember getting her first basket. Both play basketball year-round to stay in shape and keep their skills sharp. Sonja says that balancing her career as a lawyer and basketball has been difficult at times. The last thing she wants to do after working a full day is go to the gym and workout, but she knows she has to do it. Charmin, who interned with NBA.com TV last year, also talks about finding pick-up games to keep in shape. She doesn’t play outdoors much anymore because her knees are “sensitive to surfaces.” Sonja says that her favorite type of law is civil rights and civil liberties. She says she has always been interested in personal rights and it is something that she feels passionate about. She says that as a kid, she was a brat, now she’s a lawyer. Both women talk about basketball being secondary to getting an education and stress that while basketball is fun, it’s not forever. (Apologies to Sonja and Charmin if our paraphrasing isn't completely accurate. Angie can only take notes so fast.)