Who: Seattle Storm host the Connecticut Sun
What: While the Storm have wrapped up first place and home court advantage in the Western Conference, the Connecticut Sun hope to fight their way into the playoffs.
When: 7:30 p.m. PST
Where: KeyArena -- Seattle, WA || National television: ESPN2 || ESPN360.com || Radio: 1150 AM KKNW
Game Summary:
Storm's Confidence Wins A 83-82 Nail-biter Against Struggling Sun (SBN Seattle)
The Story:
Dishin & Swishin: Sue Bird Gets You Ready for Tonight's ESPN2 Game
Pre-game comments from coaches to come after the jump, live blog from KeyArena in the comments. Please feel free to share insights from the ESPN broadcast that we can't hear in the arena.
Storm coach Brian Agler:
- The game is more important to the Sun than the Storm:
"There's not that significant drive to fight for a playoff spot right now," said Agler. "It's a good thing, it's a comfort level, but it's not on a nightly basis -- you can lose your edge pretty easy."
- While Agler would expect to see a more energized team, they've traveled quite a bit: from Seattle to Minnesota to Denver to Tulsa to Phoenix to Seattle.
"That's commercial airlines and trying to fit everything into a budget," said Agler.
- But as you can guess, they aren't happy with their performance over their last two games -- the turnovers they've had have been among their highest in the season:
"We've had games where we've turned it over highly, but we've also during that stretch had the ability to regroup and make plays down the stretch to secure victory," said Agler. "We've had 10% of our turnovers for the season in these last two games. That's not real efficient." - On Le'coe Willingham: she had a collision with Diana Taurasi in the 3rd quarter of their recent game with Phoenix that resulted in a bruise and people just keep hitting that same spot.
Sun coach Mike Thibault:
- "We're the desperate team in our conference right now," said Thibault. "But we've been inconsistent for about three weeks. We came out of the All-Star game great and then had a few setbacks."
- A few reasons suggested for the slump: in the last few games they've had 47 points scored off turnovers, they've made bad decisions, and they're one of the youngest teams in the league. In addition, just as Asjha Jones really hit her stride, Anete Jekabsone-Zogota got injured.
- The 9-4 start was Fool's Gold: "Sometimes winning camouflages some sins and we won some games where the other team was worse than us."
- Along with the fans, at the beginning of the year he thought that the team would gel more consistently than they did.
- He's hoping that with Renee Montgomery and Kara Lawson on the court tonight they can try to keep Bird and Wright off-balance by staying aggressive.