SEATTLE — Seattle Storm head coach Jenny Boucek provided the perfect description of her young team after its 74-69 victory over the Tulsa Shock on Tuesday.
“We’re a work in progress,” Boucek said. “Every game we’ve been making steps in different areas. I’m focusing right now on finishing the game, but there’s a lot of little things within the game that we focused on from the last game at getting better at, our stuff, our systems, that we got better at.”
The Storm’s focus on finishing was borne out of the disappointment that came out of the previous three games. Seattle held leads late in games against Minnesota, San Antonio and Tulsa, but lost all three.
“We’re gaining experience,” Boucek said. “We had three games in a row that were basically one-possession games and we lost all of them, but each one I saw progress. I just thought we continued to make progress tonight. The last thing that usually comes (is finishing games) — and Tulsa can tell you, for two years they lost I don’t know how many close games. Finishing games is one of the hardest things for teams to get.”
The Storm’s victory ended Tulsa’s eight-game winning streak. The Shock played without star point guard Skylar Diggins, who missed the game with a knee sprain, and hadn’t lost since the season-opener against Minnesota.
Seattle dropped the front end of the home-and-home series against Tulsa on Sunday, falling 93-89. It appeared they would be in for a similar fate on Tuesday, falling behind 12-0 early in the first quarter.
“That’s going to happen,” Storm point guard Sue Bird said of the early deficit. “In the WNBA, you’re going to see everything. You’re going to be down 20 and you’re going to be up 20. You’re going to have amazing starts and you’re going to have rough starts. Really, it’s the teams that don’t let those things faze them that can be successful.”
There isn’t much that Bird hasn’t seen in her 13 years in the league. She is using that experience to mentor a team that is rebuilding on the fly. On Tuesday, she led by example.
Bird led the Storm with 17 points and shot 7-for-13 from the floor. More importantly, she didn’t have a single turnover.
Bird’s performance came after missing Sunday’s game to rest, something Boucek said won’t need to happen often.
“Sue’s feeling really good physically,” Boucek. “I don’t anticipate having to rest her a whole lot.”
The Storm battled back from the early 12-0 hole to take its first lead on a Bird jump shot with 4:25 remaining in the third quarter. They never trailed again.
In addition to Bird, rookies Jewell Loyd and Ram Tokashiki helped lead the way. Loyd finished with 13 points and Tokashiki added 12.
“I think both of them, the level they came from, we’re used to being the best athletes on the floor,” Boucek said. “They come here and they’re still very good athletes, but they’re not necessarily head and shoulders above everybody they’re playing against. We’re also putting a lot of information into them at a very rapid pace than I think either of them are used to. All of those things made for a lot of adjustments that was needed on both their parts. I think now that the information is starting to settle in and they’re starting to hear the same things over and over again and it’s being digested. It’s freeing up their instincts a little bit more and taking some of the hesitation out of their game.”
Aaron Lommers covers the Seattle Storm for The Herald. Follow him on Twitter at @aaronlommers and contact him at alommers@heraldnet.com.
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