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?