Final
score: Storm 57 Fire 47 (W) (1-1)
Attendance
|
8627
Anthem
Xtra Notes | Yikes. Mariah Carey you're not
Anthem
High Note | Made my fillings hurt
Anthem
Style | Bad
Fan
Noise | We would have been louder if we weren't
split into 3 sections
Signs
| Tons. Everyone wanted to get on ESPN2
Fan
Psyche | Our rookie is better than your rookie
Halftime
| Went out to get our free hot dog
We
win. We win by playing disruptive defense, getting out to
an early lead and responding every time the Fire get too close.
True, Simone couldn't hit a bucket with two shovels and a
sledgehammer. True, Sue couldn't hit a three, or any other
jumper for that matter. True, it may be a matter of the Portland
Fire sucking worse than we do, but we still win.
I
was impressed that the Storm performed well at two things
they haven't done so well at in the past - responding to the
other team cutting away at the lead and beating the full or
3/4 court press. The Liberty zeroed in on our point guards
with a variety of presses and disrupted them most of that
game. Chalk this up to learning from mistakes - the Storm
handled the press a lot better. Mostly it was the fact that
Sue didn't give the Fire players much chance to stop her.
She ran the ball up the court and forced the Fire players
to backpedal the whole way. The few times that the press worked
was when another Storm point guard would dribble up a little
bit, stop and pass out of the approaching double team. Usually,
the pass went to a center or forward and depending on who
that was, trouble wasn't too far away. Running is good. Keep
doing that.
The
Storm also did a lot better at holding off the Fire from getting
too much momentum. The Storm led by as much as 16 and by as
little as 6 (on three different occasions). Each time the
Fire got close, the Storm would find a way to score or find
a way to get a defensive break. Again, this may be that the
Fire are not the Liberty and we may not be as successful at
this against other elite teams, but it worked today.
Another
item for the learning from mistakes column, the Storm are
handling Sue's pinpoint passes a little better. Maybe getting
into Takeisha's mug last game is having a good effect.
Takeisha
got zero playing time even though we were down a post player
(Lauren) and McCulley was ineffective in the limited minutes
she got. Someone said that it looked like Takeisha may have
been limping a bit, but we've heard nothing about an injury.
She could have been useful against Burras.
So
I commented on the last gameday how Sue left the court looking
like she was ready to rip someone a new one, and how it seemed
she was angry or frustrated over the loss. Well, maybe I'm
just not reading her very well because she had the same expression
and exuded the same body language when she left the court
after this win. Maybe that's just how she is after a game.
Stormrocks
suggested that we start a new Stormfans tradition and award
a Stormfans Player of the Game. Great idea. The winner of
this game's SPoG (we prefer the pronunciation, spoog, like
boot) has to be Sonja Henning. Her stat line may not be stellar,
but she was the main reason Jackie Stiles finished the game
with one point. There were a couple of sequences where Sonja
was all over Jackie like last year's media - in her face and
unrelenting. On offense, Sonja passed on an open three and
flubbed a lay-in, but you know what - we now have people who
can score and I'm feeling quite comfortable keeping Sonja
as a defensive weapon. So here's SPoG in your eye, Sonja Henning.
Notes:
Even
though new scoreboards have been installed in the Key, we
still like the boards in the Rose Garden better. You can see
every stat all game long and at a glance.
Plus they keep cool stats like airballs, missed free throws
and other things a fan desperately need to know.
Fire
fans suck. Someone threw something at us and hit Angie in
the back of the head. At the last game we went to in Portland
we got all kinds of verbal crap from some people behind us.
As far as I have seen, no one has ever mistreated opposing
fans who have come to the Key. Show a little sportsmanship,
you ignorant miscreants.
We
were a little disappointed that we didn't get to go down and
wait for the team to come out of the locker room like we did
last year. That was one of the highlights of the trip last
year and we were looking forward to it this year. Also, for
some reason we were all separated into three groups even though
there were plenty of empty seats in the section most of us
were in.
Angie
and I made a 6' long sign that says "Go Storm" and
unveiled it at this game. We actually got up on the Rose Garden
Arenavision a couple of times - a little unexpected. Spot,
our black-spotted nemesis, came over and acted like he was
going to rip the sign in two. Angie kept saying, "Bad
dog! Bad Dog!" until he left. It wouldn't have worked
anyway - vinyl ($68 at Kinko's by the way).
Why
hasn't Sylvia Crawley (Fire, #00) dunked the damn ball yet?
She obviously can and does during every shoot around before
the game. She actually had a great opportunity to when she
got past the defense on one play, but she went for a lay-up
instead. Do you really want the Diva to be the first to dunk?
Has the WNBA sent out a memo telling all the other players
to hold off on dunking so their model (gag) media darling
can do it first? Take the initiative. Get it out of your system.
Go down in WNBA history (even though the ABL had a dunk contest).
Just do it already.
Angie
got to talk to Adia Barnes' mother before the game and talked
about gardening tips for the roses in our front yard. She
and Adia got to Portland on Friday.
Michelle
Marciniak came up and greeted the fans who were congregating
at the fountain outside the game. A little girl gave Michelle
a box of tootsie roll pops to have on the bus ride home.
Jenny
Mowe was in street clothes and came over before the game and
sat down next to Michelle to talk. It didn't look like Jenny
and Lauren had much to say to each other, hee hee.
Finally,
there won't be a separate Fanstuff for the bus trip since
all we really did was get on the bus, get off to pee, get
back on, watch "What Women Want" on the too loud
video system ( "Castaway" on the way back), and
get off at the Rose Garden. I took a couple of pictures, but
do you really want to see people sitting in a bus? |