GAME HIGHLIGHTS

• With tonight’s win, Seattle’s improved to 20-7, recording the franchise’s first 20-win season since 2011, and seventh in team history.
• Seattle’s road record now stands at 10-3, on pace to set the franchise’s best road record in history (currently 11, set in 2010, when the Storm went 11-6 on the road). The team has four of its remaining seven regular-season games away from KeyArena.

KEY STATS OF THE GAME

• Seattle outscored Phoenix 28-16 in the third quarter to take an 81-60 lead into the final frame.
• The Storm tied a season-high with 48 points in the paint, which it has now achieved three times this season, compared to the Mercury’s 38 points inside.
• Seattle eclipsed the century mark for the fifth time this season, extending its franchise record, which used to be three games with 100-plus points (2017 season).

STORM HIGHLIGHTS

• Leading WNBA MVP candidate Breanna Stewart, who entered tonight’s game leading the WNBA in scoring at 22.8 PPG, finished with 16 points, 10 of which came in the third quarter as part of a 28-16 run for the Storm.
• Breanna Stewart, who entered the night fifth in the WNBA with 8.2 rebounds per game, grabbed eight boards.
• Guard Sue Bird handed out five assists, giving her 181 on the season, closing in on Ticha Penicherio’s single-season record of 236, set in 2000 with the Sacramento Monarchs.
• Natasha Howard scored 15 points and grabbed 10 rebounds, good for her 4th double-double in 2018, 5th of her career.
• Jewell Loyd finished with 29 points, her 10^th 20-plus point scoring effort in 2018. Seattle is now 10-0 when Loyd hits or surpasses the 20-point mark.
• Jewell Loyd connected on 5-for-7 from deep, tying her career-high from deep (5, vs. Las Vegas, 5/31/18).
• Jewell Loyd swiped 3 steals tonight, 1 shy of her season-high (4, 2 times).
• Alysha Clark drilled 3 triples tonight, tying a career-high which she has now achieved 5 times. She finished with 13 points for her ninth double-figure scoring game of 2018.
• Seattle improved to 18-3 with the starting lineup of Sue Bird, Jewell Loyd, Breanna Stewart, Alysha Clark and Natasha Howard.
• Tonight marked the second time that Jewell Loyd has scored 29 points against Phoenix (29, 5/23/18).
• Seattle hit 10 or more three’s for the 10^th time this season.
• Seattle shot 54.1 percent tonight and its current season average stands at 47 percent, which currently ranks second all-time in franchise history (47.3 percent in 2017).
• The Storm is now 20-17 all-time against Phoenix in the desert.
• With tonight’s win, Seattle has taken the season series with the Phoenix Mercury, 2-1. The road team has won each of the matchups between these two teams in 2018. Seattle won the season series over Phoenix for the 13^th time in franchise history.
• Seattle improved to 17-1 when leading at halftime.
• The Storm improved to 6-1 on the road in the month of July.

NEXT GAME: Seattle will return home to Seattle to take on the defending WNBA Champion Minnesota Lynx on Friday, Aug. 3. Tipoff is set for 7 p.m./PT at KeyArena.

Seattle Storm Quotes:

Storm HEAD COACH Dan Hughes

(On the game…)

“To me, they got out of the gate in the first quarter, but we had a great second and third quarter. I think a lot of that had to do with the ball movement and the activity level. Our ball movement today was strong. I thought Jewell was extremely good in the first half.  Natasha and Stewie (Breanna Stewart) got it going in the second half, and Alysha Clark was just solid throughout.  Our bench gave us good play today as well.”

(On limiting Phoenix to 25 percent from three…)

“It’s really important to them. You’ve got a dilemma because you’ve got Brittney Griner, who is a major concern in the paint and in that area. At the same time you’ve got three effective, and two phenomenal three-point shooters before you add Leilani Mitchell coming out, so you have to kind of do two things. I thought our activity level was high and it really was good for us because we were able to kind of congest on Brittney, but still get to spot up threes, and we got lucky.”

(On how hard it is stopping Phoenix’s Big 3…)

“Well it’s really hard because what I noticed today is that when you’re talking about Taurasi and you’re talking about Griner, it’s a nightmare because they create plays for each other. Diana, to me, as the years have gone on has even gotten better with the basketball so it’s not just getting open and shooting it, it’s putting it on the floor. Brittney has gotten the ability to play away from the basket a little bit. What’s really hard is when they play together and then they put Bonner in a situation where she’s active. Her length bothered us. She got a lot of offensive rebounds and things, but it’s hard. It keeps you up at night.”

Storm forward Breanna Stewart 16 points |8 REBOUNDS

(On limiting Phoenix to shooting 25 percent from 3…)

“We know that they’re great shooters and we made it a point of emphasis to make sure we’re really closing out on them. Some of them got good looks, the ball just didn’t go in the basket. We have similarities in the way we play an inside-outside game.”

(On Storm’s balanced scoring…)

“I think, especially having the first game after all-star break, it’s probably the hardest game because you really have to make sure you get into a really good rhythm. We wanted to set the tone. We knew this game was important, and we’ve been on the road for the past five games now so we wanted to finish this trip and go home and have a home game for once.”

Phoenix Mercury Quotes: 

MERCURY HEAD COACH SANDY BRONDELLO

(On giving the Storm credit or own defensive trouble…)

“Well a bit of both. I mean that’s a great team in there. They’ve just got so many weapons. They’ve got the best point guard to ever play the game, and you’ve got Howard impacting, you have (Jewell) Loyd who always plays great against us. You’ve got players coming off the bench you know doing their jobs, but a lot of it is stuff with us. We let a team score 102 points. We have to get better at playing defense. It’s as simple as that. We have to fight harder, we have to be more assertive with what we do. We just gave them wide open looks there through our mistakes, really over rotation. We were just a little slow to get into help which was creating it, this is a really smart team, and they’ve got multiple scorers. It’s a bit of both, credit to them they’re a great team. We’ve got to get better if we want to go far in the playoffs.”

(On team relying on Diana Taurasi early…)

“Definitely, but we can’t put everything on Diana. We need other people to step up. We keep talking about if you’re open you need to shoot the ball with confidence. When their players are open they make shots. When we’re open we don’t even make shots. That’s why we put all that time and effort into shooting every day. We need to stay confident and stay aggressive. We’ve got to keep moving the ball. I think it was good to see BG get going in the second half, we need her. We need an inside outside presence. I think we need to get back to the mindset of playing better defense, and hopefully all things will catch up with it because we’re not going to win many games if we let teams score over 90 points, 80 points for that matter.”

(On Devereaux Peters…)

“I thought she was good. It’s always hard to come in late into a season. You have to learn all these new plays, all these new players. Look, for her I think she had solid minutes. She’s had two practices, an hour each. I thought what she gave us is what we are looking for and she’ll get better with more time. It’s something that we can back up in that four spot.”

MERCURY guard Leilani Mitchell 7 points | 2 assists

 (On the team’s performance…)

“Whenever we decide as a team to make an adjustment and play a different way and more aggressive and more assertive things will change.”

(On what can change…)

“Talk more on defensive, communicate. A lot of times we have two people going to the ball or over helping, leaving people wide open. How many of those shots were wide open, nobody even around them. We just have to do a better job, stick together. We still have seven games left and tomorrow obviously is a tough game, Vegas is hot right now. They’ve won a lot of games in a row, finished the first half of the season really well. It’s going to be a tough game for us.”

Mercury center Brittney Griner 25 points | 6 rebounds

(On the game…)

“It’s just us, it’s on us. I wish I had the answer to tell cause then we can do it on the court. I don’t know what it is. Maybe just not work on offensive in practice and just do defense.”

(On defending Seattle…)

“Yes, yes it is. They’re tough. They’re tough.”

(On where the team is…)

“I think we can. We aren’t on the panic button yet. We got to get some wins, we got to be better at home.”