Storm vs. Sparks-June 24, 2008

Nice to start the game off with a turnover. *rolls eyes*

I wish this game was on ESPN tonight although the Comets/SilverStars game is a good one. I am impressed by Houston of late.

24 second violation on the Sparks. Good D from LJ! I love it.

I wonder if Lisa secures her weave with SuperGlue when she plays Lauren.

Sounds like Swin has some more energy than she has had in the past few games. We need her to be more effective all over the court. We play much better when Swin is on for sure.

Tanisha coming in a bit early. I wonder if Agler is not impressed by someone's defense....Swin's it seems. I like the energy that T brings to the court. She is Tenacious T!!!!

I like it when Sue hits early 3's. It seems to be a good sign for how the rest of her game is going to go although with 2 early turnovers.....eek.

(Speaking of the Comets, which I am watching on TV while I have the radio on for the Storm game, it looks like the Comets are a team out to prove they are not as bad as their record indicates....they have something to prove. And lips aside, Tina Thompson is awesome, breaking her finger in the first round and then coming back in the second half and playing awesome.)

Looks like Lisa Leslie is putting on another class from her school of acting. Holding her back after Lauren "fouled" her. I put "foul" in quotes because half the fouls called on her opponents are probably from her Oscar worthy fake injury performances.

17-15 Seattle with their first lead....oops...that didn't last long. We have to figure out how to guard her better. She keeps burning us.

Cash-Swoopes-Bird-Gearlds-Ely: very interesting small lineup by Brian Agler here. Let's see how it pans out. Well it didn't last long really......LJ back in so we get bigger again.

End of a fast paced first quarter. We are up one after the first. I like our energy for this game.

24-21 Sparks up in a flip flopping game. Seems like we are well matched teams offensively and defensively. I mean I know everyone is all LA this and LA that but I think the Storm just needed some time to work out their kinks.

If I had a dime for every missed layup that Swin has had this year I would have a dollar at least. At least she has decided to be a shot blocker tonight.

28-24 Storm. Love that KG is on. Why can't she be on at home? The fans would love for Katie to be on at home. She just needs some confidence. Maybe Agler's little "pep talk" the other day got to the reserves.

(The SASS and Comets are going to OT....Tina's broken finger and all.)

Sue is having some trouble holding on to the ball tonight. I bet that is gonna effect the assist to turnover ratio. T just hit a three. I have always been a T fan but this year I am talking she should be a major contender for sixth man (along with Candace Wiggins/Alexis Hornbuckle) if she continues to play this way.

2nd 24 second violation for LA. Seattle is gonna climb up in the defenseive rankings for sure after tonight and last Friday. That is if they ever get any recognition from anyone in the league or the press. I love how Seattle NEVER gets any attention on WNBA.com. Like after our awesome win over the Fever they have all this stuff about LA and then in tiny tiny little writing on the bottom of the page it is like : Storm holds off Fever. Are you kidding me? A team makes another team have (4) 24 second shot clock violations in a game and that gets NO recognition.

35-33 Sparks up by 2 at the half in a REALLY fast paced game. I was just saying, "Its halftime already."

(Houston just won. There goes SASS's unblemished home record. And if you don't admire the game and work ethic of Tina Thompson after tonights game, you should have your head checked. Plus she shouted out to Barb Turner on live TV which I am positive that BT got a huge kick out of.)

I am thinking that Lauren needs to lay off the 3's for a while. She just is not knocking them down right now. I know shooters need to keep shooting but sometimes...it just isn't the time. She keeps taking these annoying inappropriate quick three's. Wow....2 minutes into the 3rd quarter and we get our 1st offensive rebound.

DeLisha and Lisa have been spending too much time working on their acting. I wonder if that is part of their practice. Faking injury to draw the offensive fouls.......Delisha has drawn 6 fouls. And I bet none of them were actually fouls.

45-41 Sparks. Marie Ferdinand-Harris is killing us. Hard to tell if it is because of the Lisa Leslie double team that she is capitalizing because the game is on the radio. But if the person you are using to double off of is on fire like that and the person you are doubling isn't making shots which Leslie isn't...STOP DOUBLING!

SHOCKER! We are being outrebounded tonight. I knew that would happen with Parker and Leslie (the number 2 and 1 rebounders respectively). That always hurts us especially when Yo gets into foul trouble.

51-41 Sparks up. We can't really get anything going on the offensive end and we aren't really doing much except fouling on the defensive end. It would not be fair to say that they are on a run because their last 8 points are from free throws.

We need to get Lauren into this game. We need to go to Lauren. Have her work in the block and it is good almost every time. She wasn't the MVP for no reason.

Another missed layup by Swin Cash. I don't know what to say anymore about that.

Another question: Will the Seattle Storm EVER get over this horrible third quarter crap that has plagued us for the last 3 years? I am starting to think we should not even go into the locker room at the half anymore. We should just stay on the floor and keep playing until the other team comes back out again.

4 of 18 from the floor in the third quarter tonight.

Like that Agler has put all bench in and it is working out. We cut our 14 point lead to 8 with bench play. Looks like Agler's bench pep talk did some good.

Down 9 with 5 minutes left to play so good play from the bench but I would have liked to see the starters come back in when we were down 9 with 8 minutes left to play.

The starters came in for 2 minutes and have really done nothing and Agler is sending the bench back in. He is not impressed with the starters at all. I wish this game was on television because I would love to see how Agler is reacting. When he was miked in the one game we played this year I was impressed with how vocal he is. I am still on the fence about him but I like what he is doing tonight. Even if we lose this game which it appears we will, I like that he is taking the starters out and sending them a message. This team is going to have to learn how to win and win on the road effectively or we will be our usual out in the first round of the playoffs Storm which we have been since we won in 2004. I guess Brian Agler should not have let the starters go with only 90 minutes of practice....seems like they needed the practice as much as the bench.

Nice....Parker dunked on us too. I HATE losing to LA! I mean anyone but LA.

We blew this one big time. BIG time. We had them it was so close and we were contending. And we blew it.

Sadness.

I wanted us to win tonight to gain a game on San Antonio.