Final score: Storm 62 – Fever 90 (L) (4-4)

Submitted by Scowl

Game Photos | Scott L

What happens when everything goes wrong?

We started great then in the second quarter the Fever defense picked it up. Sue started throwing turnovers and we couldn't get a decent pass to anyone near the basket. Then the Fever offense picked it up and ran past our sorry butts to the basket. From then on, the Fever controlled the area under both baskets. They collapsed on anything in green under the basket trying to score. We could not box them out at all! How many times did the Fever slip between two Storm players to get the rebound and an easy bucket. Five? Six? No one even tried. Here's a typical second-chance shot that shouldn't have happened. Tami Sutton-Brown just walked right past the Storm and plunked it in:

The Storm's second half offense rotated around a huge vacant spot under the basket. No one dared step under it and try to post up except JB who was pounced on every time. Every one of our posts acted like they had five fouls or something. We passed it around the perimeter Lin Dunn style until we turned it over or flung it in for a miss. The officiating was heavily leaning towards the "let them play" side. They let a lot of lower body contact pass and the Fever used their lower bodies all night.

Of course discussing this with the refs led nowhere.

I hate to say this but Betty has turned from a problem to a liability on the court. She had more turnovers than points tonight. She did not drive. She did not defend. She had none of the explosive unpredictability that makes other teams fear her. She got pulled out, put back in, pulled out again, and sent back in with no results at all. She looked like she was phoning in her performance tonight.

But the good things. I wrote them down somewhere so I wouldn't forget them...oh yes here they are. Conseco (pronounced "con-SEEK-o") is one of the nicest arenas I've seen. Getting my camera in required only two tricks: carrying the camera with the neck strap so it was nearly at the floor (they were too busy looking in my bag to notice it), and putting the lens in the bag sideways so they couldn't judge how big it was (they called a guy over to check it out and he declared it acceptable). The rows behind us were full of Purdue fans yelling for Katie and walked out as disappointed as we were. The Fever fans were super super nice. Well, one odd woman asked me, a strange question: "You takin' pictures o' them?" and all I could say was, "Uh yes I am." But everyone else asked us good questions like what the arena situation was in Seattle and so on.

Oh, and Tully was so happy to see us, she jumped right out to say hello to us.

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