Final score: Storm 78 – Mystics 68 (W) (16-11)

Submitted by LaurenRules

Officials: June (“I’ve been around forever” Courteau, Denise “Doppler loves me” Brooks, and Maraj “I am a complete idiot” Kogut

Anthem: Now that I decided to stop reporting on this, they’ve had two great performances in a row. The Seattle Women’s Chorus, with some seriously lovely harmony and someone with a very good high B-flat.

Attendance: 6,791

Player Intros: Nice rounds of applause for Marissa Coleman and Alana Beard. Tepid applause for the rest of the Mystics. Julie Plank is very thin and beige is not her color. Doppler was totally flirting with the refs – even stole a taco salad from an audience member to try to bribe one of them.

First Quarter
Lauren won the tip, but out came the whistle, and it had to be rejumped, thanks to the male ref. Amusingly enough, Lauren waited for Sanford to go up, kept her feet on the ground and just swatted the ball to Sue.

Game started a bit on the slow side with turnovers and missed shots for both team. Washington scored the first two points on a Currie jumper, Sanford blocked Lauren’s shot and Beard scored on a running jump shot. Uneasy rumblings in the arena. Sue took a minute, flipped her ponytail, grabbed the ball and fed Lauren for a three. Fans happily sat down, started breathing again. Harding missed a jump shot, and Camille snatched the rebound – she is wonderful about slicing under the basket, and, seconds later, sunk her own three. In under a minute, we went from 0-4 to 6-4. Currie hit her own three, but Camille sank two free throws off of a Currie foul, and we were up again.

Our defense REALLY came alive at this point – it was like watching the Mystics run into a wall. Grabbing rebounds, double-teaming players, forcing ugly shots, blocks, steals – we really had it all. Lauren had an especially gorgeous sequence when she blocked a shot, fed Sue, who hit a three, and stole the ball, all the space of seconds. THREE blocks for Lauren in the first quarter alone, sore back or no sore back. Amazing.

Sue in particular was lighting up the offense, hitting two threes and a jumper, but everyone contributed: Swin hit a three, JB, in for Lauren, hit a layup; and T contributed two jump shots. 27-14 Storm.

Second Quarter
The second quarter opened just beautifully, with back-to-back threes from Shannon. Beard hit a free throw, but they weren’t able to score again until 6:30. Washington’s horrible free throw shooting really made all of the difference in this game. They gave away a ridiculous amount of points. Meanwhile, Janell hit two beautiful shots, a layup and a jumper. She is VERY good at faking out other players – got a nice finesse game going, especially for a big. T hit a jumper of her own. 39-16, with 6:13 to go.

At this point, the refs evidently decided that a 50-point win for Seattle just wouldn’t do (maybe they’re fixing to go into politics when their tenure as refs are over? Couldn’t do much more damage, at least in some cases). Out came the whistles. Washington only hit one free throw. LJ missed a three, Beard rebounded, but T snatched it from her and went coast-to-coast with a FABULOUS driving layup. 41-17. Fans went berserk. Timeout Washington.

Suzy had a nice sequence of putting up shots and rebounding, including one gutsy play when she grabbed a rebound, hitting the floor hard and feeding Tanisha. She also drove to the basket and promptly was fouled, but missed both free throws, to her evident disgust. Turnovers on both sides – T lost the ball on a silly rebound move, but then Coleman threw it out of bounds. Scoring got pretty quiet – a few baskets for them, a few for us. We did a great job of hitting our free throws. A-Rob got herself on the stat sheet with a nice rebound. 47-24 Storm.

Halftime: Parade of women athletes, including collegiate, professional and Olympic. The Huskies were well-represented – volleyball, tennis and cross-country; Seattle U’s new coaching staff; the Seattle Majestics (VERY tough-looking), the Rat City Rollergirls (one of whom had the cutest little daughter cradled on her hip), and a plethora of Olympians, including quite a few rowers. A few odd omissions, like our Women’s Soccer team, Rosalyn Sumners; the UW Cross-Country team and so on, but a wonderful look at some very talented women. It was especially neat to see Storm co-owner Ginny Gilder. One of the honorees, trap shooter, Dr. Sue Natrass, has gone to SIX Olympic Games.

The Mystics didn’t come out for ages, but when they did, they all congregated on the right side of their half, sending a number of balls out into the audience. Maybe the left side of the floor was broken?

Third Quarter
The Mystics went on a mini-run to open the third quarter, scoring six points, starting with a pseudo-foul – the fourth – on Camille. The male ref, who looks like a refugee from “Twilight,” was totally gunning for her, and ignoring the way the Mystics defense was playing hack and slash under the boards. Lauren managed to hit a free throw off of a Sanford foul. Sue hit a layup to put us up by twenty. The Mystics discovered their running bank shot, but Beard went down clutching her leg. Ow. Nice round of applause for her when she was helped off of the court. Our fans can be pretty classy.

Lauren and JB both hit jumpers. Swin hit a layup. She seemed to be struggling a bit tonight, quite a few missed shots and turnovers, but she had a few nice plays as well.

Harding put down one free throw off of (yet another) Seattle foul, this one on Sue. Hey, Mr. Twilight Vampire Dude, it’s okay to call a foul on the away team, even if they’re down 50 points, especially when they poke Sue in the eye or clobber Swin on the wrist. Really. Harding missed her second free throw, LJ grabbed the rebound, and fed Sue, who put down a HUGE three, this one from NBA range. Minutes later, Sue repeated the favor for Lauren. 62-34 Storm with 3:58 to go. Gorgeous. Just perfection.

T turned the ball over and Vampire Ref guy called a foul on Shannon. Coleman hit both free throws. A-Walk came in for Swin. She guarded the wrong person on the next play and Coleman hit a three. Coleman has a very poised game for a rookie and is quite a bit thinner than she looks on TV. Nice layup from Lauren. A-Walk put up a three-point, missed, grabbed her own rebound, and was fouled on the next shot. Both free throws good. Nice hustle play from A-Walk, although she looked a bit slow and lost occasionally. Good, tough defense, though.

Blue hit a three. Melvin clobbered Janell in the face and, in the subsequent turmoil; JB was whistled for a three. From where I sat, it looked as though Janell was waving her arms around and hit Melvin in the face – because, frankly, that looked to be a pretty wimpy, off-center punch. I’ll bet Janell can punch lots better than that. Whatever. Mann hit the technical. Janell hit her free throw. Turnovers and missed shots. 67-45 Storm.

Fourth Quarter
Amusing sequence to open the quarter – ball stolen from Swin/Sue on a bad pass – our favorite point guard charged down to the end of the court, strips the ball from Ajavon and stole it right back. Out come the whistles again. Foul, foul, foul. Meanwhile, Camille put up a layup, was clobbered by no less than three Mystics players, and – no foul. Of course. No one scored. No one scored some more. The Storm didn’t look particularly tired, just a bit lost offensively and got pounded or whistled at or after every shot.

Our benchies came in and Washington went on a run. Camille, carrying FIVE fouls, at least TWO of which were completely STUPID (I’m looking at YOU, Mr.Twilight!), finally shoveled up a ridiculous, underhanded layup for us at 3:26. Crowd roared. Tanisha stripped Ajavon, who thought she should have been called on a foul. Well, if that WAS foul, that can make up for the ten or others that emphatically were NOT. Ajavon flipped off of a ref, got whistled for the T. Dumb move, Matee. Tanisha took the free throw, sank it. Camille hit a jumper. Currie and Coleman both scored. Camille fed Janell for a thread-the-needle running layup. I think she was high scorer! The bench came in. Washington went on a little run with about a minute to go, but never really got into the game. Final Score: 78-68 Storm.

Notes:
It was raining threes in the Key tonight. I’ve never seen such great outside shooting from so many people. Lauren, Sue, Swin, Camille, Shannon – wow.

Much crisper offense this game. Sharper passes, much more confidence. Unfortunately, lots of turnovers, too.

The offense needs a leader when the starters are off of the floor. Shannon did okay with bringing the ball down, but I’m not sure the players know who should take the lead on scoring – and that’s one reason I’ve been harping on about the bench needing to play. Both A-Walk and SBB had some nice looks, but nothing fell.

Swin appears to be in a slight slump. Seven points, five rebounds and five turnovers.

Weird that we had three players walking around with five fouls EACH, yet no Mystics player had more than three. Oh? Really?

Something’s happened to Sanford’s athleticisim. She used to have a much better vertical than that.

Really pretty razzle-dazzle play by LJ, JB and Sue, involving “hot potato” passing under the basket. Pretty and FAST! Yet another play that probably won’t make it to Play of the Game. Grr. Have we even HAD one of those this year?

Much blathering by the announcer right before Ride the Train. The little kids near me were palpitating in their seats.

Postgame interview with A-Walk. I'm not sure that hitting two free throws qualifies her as "Player of the Game," but it was nice to see her back on the court again.

Huge defensive props to T and Swin and whoever else was guarding Alana Beard. One of sixth from the floor That's ridiculous. We also forced 20 turnovers and had 14 steals, but, unfortunately, they had 15.

Janell is sneaking her way into Sixth Woman consideration. I think that's either her second or third game as high scorer. We'd better be careful or someone's going to snatch her away next year.

On to CT. Go Storm!