Seattle Storm: Takeaways from Friday’s Win over the Fever

The Seattle Storm improved to 9-4 on the season following a 72-63 win over the Indiana Fever at KeyArena on Friday night.

Jewell Loyd poured in a game-high 25 points, adding six rebounds, four assists and two steals to an excellent all-around night. Breanna Stewart chipped in with 15 points, while Natasha Howard finished just short of a double-double (11 points, nine rebounds).

The Storm were highly reliant on that trio, as Sue Bird and Kaleena Mosqueda-Lewis were the next highest scorers (five points).

Seattle’s defense went a long way to securing the victory. The Fever shot 26.3 percent from three-point range. Kelsey Mitchell in particular had a hard time finding a flow for Indiana. She scored 11 points on 4-of-14 shooting, including going 1-of-7 on threes.

While it wasn’t the most comprehensive result of the Storm’s 2018 campaign, a win is a win, and the team sits third in the WNBA.

Here are some takeaways from Friday night.

Jewell to the Rescue

Loyd cooled off following her stretch of five straight 20-point games back in May. Entering Friday, she had averaged 13.3 points on 36.7 percent shooting over her previous six outings.

The Fever game saw Loyd back to her best, as she shot 10-of-15 from the field. More importantly, she struck a great balance between getting to the basket and spotting up from beyond the arc.

Indiana is a team against whom Loyd should feast inside. Kayla Alexander is the Fever’s tallest player (6’4″), and she’s on the bench for long stretches. When the 6’3″ Natalie Achonwa is often the biggest forward on the floor for Indiana, Loyd should be aggressive with drives inside.

On Friday night, she didn’t hesitate to attack the basket.

That, in turn, has a domino effect for the Storm, because Loyd’s efficiency is often a general indicator for Seattle. In the team’s four losses, Loyd shot 30.2 percent from the floor. In the Storm’s nine wins, on the other hand, she hit 52.5 percent of her shots.

Stewart struggled to make a significant impact on the game, while the Storm bench combined for 11 points. Seattle needed something special from Loyd, and she delivered.

KML Isn’t Making Most of Starting Opportunity

For the second game in a row, Mosqueda-Lewis started in place of an injured Alysha Clark.

Clark’s ankle injury has offered Mosqueda-Lewis the chance to play a larger role in Seattle’s rotation, and the 2015 first-round pick hasn’t capitalized. She had six points in Tuesday’s defeat to the Las Vegas Aces and then the five points on Friday night.

To some extent, it gets a bit tougher for Mosqueda-Lewis to stand out when she’s the fourth or even fifth scoring option with the first unit. When playing alongside the second unit, she more of a focal point on offense.

With that said, being surrounded by Stewart, Loyd, Bird and Howard should allow Mosqueda-Lewis more space on the perimeter. She attempted six three-pointers Friday night, hitting only one.

Right now, Mosqueda-Lewis isn’t dispelling the notion she’s at her best as the sixth woman.

Sami Ends Her Drought

Sami Whitcomb’s shooting had fallen off a cliff before Friday’s game. She was 0-of-7 on three-pointers in her previous five games, and she hadn’t made a field goal since Seattle’s 88-63 win over the Los Angeles Sparks on June 7.

Whitcomb finally brought the run to an end against the Fever, connecting on a three-pointer with 28.2 seconds remaining in the fourth quarter.

That shot didn’t alter the outcome of the game, but it could be important in helping to get Whitcomb’s confidence back up.

Whitcomb doesn’t need to explode for three or four three-pointers off the bench in order to make her presence felt. The mere threat of her in catch-and-shoot situations can be enough to warrant attention from opposing teams. That then helps create more scoring opportunities from her teammates.

For the most part this year, opponents could feel reasonably confident about leaving Whitcomb open. The Storm will be hopeful Friday’s game was a small step toward Whitcomb rediscovering her shooting stroke.

Positives and Negatives from Five-Game Homestand

Friday’s game concluded a lengthy stretch of home games for Seattle, with the Storm going 3-2 over the past two weeks.

The 103-92 win over the Connecticut Sun was the highlight, though some of the shine is coming off of that victory as the Sun have now lost four in a row. The Storm also showed their mettle by clawing back from a 14-point second-half deficit once again against the Chicago Sky

Ultimately, head coach Dan Hughes is likely going to rue missed opportunities more than he’ll savor the three wins in five games.

The Aces are improving, but losing to them by 12 points at home wasn’t a good result any way you look at it, given where Seattle wants to be. The 67-64 defeat to the Atlanta Dream on June 10 was the Storm’s worst offensive performance of the season as they shot 4-of-26 from three-point territory.

The homestand didn’t reveal much more about Seattle than was already clear entering June.

The rest of the month will truly test the Storm. They hit the road Sunday to take on the Dallas Wings and then travel to Minneapolis to face the Minnesota Lynx on Tuesday. Seattle returns home Thursday to welcome in the Sparks.

Those three games will either reinforce the notion the Storm belong among the WNBA’s elite, or they’ll be a sobering assessment of how far Seattle needs to go to reach that level.