Seattle Storm surge past Atlanta Dream in 2nd half, win 95-71

Seattle outscores Atlanta 50-28 in the 2nd half that leads to a 24-point blowout over the Dream.

(College Park, Georgia) - The Seattle Storm (8-2) got back to their winning ways on Wednesday night defeating the Atlanta Dream (4-5) by a final score of 95-71. Seattle turned a close game through two quarters into an absolute blowout midway through the 4th quarter. They did something they haven’t been able to do as often this season, get up big on an opponent and bury them by the time the 4th quarter rolls around.

“That’s something that we definitely need to make sure when we have that 7-to-8 point lead that we keep pushing. We can’t let up and let them get easy threes. Things that keep their momentum going. We did a good job of taking care of that today!” Katie Lou Samuelson told me after the game.

Seattle was once again led by Jewell Loyd, who is fresh off being announced as the Western Conference Player of the Week for her incredible performances over the past week. Loyd finished the game with 18 points on 7-12 FG shooting in just 25 minutes.

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Successful start to the road trip! 💪✈️ Check out the full game highlights from tonight's 95-71 win over the Dream! 🎥 #TakeCover

I talked to Katie Lou after the game about Jewell Loyd’s impressive performances of late.

“She's been great. She's really stepped up for us in huge moments. And I think all of us know that we can count on her. No one has a doubt that any game you know she can do what she's been doing. But I see her continuing to do that. Even the games that I wasn't here for, I was keeping up with it. And, you know, she's a big, big player for us so we're going to continue to need her to do all that stuff that she's doing.” Lou said after the game.

Coach Noelle Quinn wanted to praise not only Jewell’s offense but also her defense.

“Do you know something else that Jewell [Loyd] has done consistently? It is defending their top player. So, maybe it went quiet because we had to change her matchup. And I will say it again: she puts in the work. It is not a surprise to me that she is playing at such a high level. Now you just see her confidence growing. To me, she is the one that has been steady in the ship as far as her consistency level of play on the offensive end. But honestly, it is the defense. Her defense is really what is helping us.” Coach Quinn said.

Loyd wasn’t the only player to do well in this game, Seattle had six players score in double figures including all five starters. Breanna Stewart was next best with 15 points, nine rebounds, five assists, and two blocked shots. Stephanie Talbot gave them a spark off the bench scoring 13 points (all in the 4th quarter). Sue Bird (11 points), Mercedes Russell (11 points), and Katie Lou Samuelson (10 points) rounded out the group. While Jordin Canada didn’t score much (two points) she did lead the team with seven assists.

Seattle shot the ball extremely well in this game going 35-64 (55%) and 12-22 (55%) from three-point range. They were able to limit Atlanta’s scoring and held them to 29-82 (35%) shooting from the floor and just 3-26 (12%) from beyond the arc.

For the Dream, Tiffany Hayes was the only player to score in double figures with 22 points. Elizabeth Williams was close to a double-double with eight points and 12 rebounds. Courtney Williams also had eight points and a team-high six assists.

Game Breakdown

What stood out immediately in this game was the offensive rebounding of the Atlanta Dream. The Dream are the number one team in the WNBA at getting offensive boards (11.8 per game) and that was apparent right from the get-go when they picked up three in the first 90 seconds of the game.

Katie Lou had a couple of nice cuts to the basket, one resulting in a beautiful pass to Mercedes Russell for a layup plus the foul. She also had five points in the quarter including a three-ball. It was nice to see her find success early in this game.

Jewell Loyd hit a three and also got fouled while shooting a three and knocked down two of her three foul shots. With Seattle’s hot shooting they jumped out to a 17-9 lead through the first six minutes of the game.

Atlanta made a small 5-0 run to cut Seattle’s lead back down to three, but then Jewell got hot. Loyd hit a beautiful jumper curling off a screen and fading to her right. She then aggressively attacked the basket for two more.

A Breanna Stewart triple put Seattle up eight points at 24-16 late into the quarter. But Aari McDonald countered with an aggressive drive to the basket to complete the AND1 opportunity for three.

Loyd finished the quarter with two more impressive jump shots to finish the quarter with 13 points. Seattle led 28-23 after one quarter of play.

Coach Noelle Quinn made an interesting decision by putting Sue Bird back in the game immediately to start the second period. The coaches are looking for ways to help the 2nd unit as lately the train has come off the tracks anytime Seattle’s Big 3 (Bird, Loyd, Stewart) are all on the bench.

Candice Dupree gave Seattle some good minutes off the bench, especially in the second quarter where she scored all four of her points and had a beautiful pass to Ezi Magbegor for a layup to push Seattle’s lead to nine at 34-25.

Seattle led 37-27 but then Atlanta went on an 8-0 run capped off by Tiffany Hayes who intercepted a Breanna Stewart pass and went coast-to-coast for the easy two to make it 37-35.

Late in the quarter with Seattle leading 42-37, Tiffany Hayes split through two defenders and finished at the rim. Odyssey Sims then stole the ball away while Seattle was trying to run out in transition. Atlanta then found Hayes in the corner who buried a three to tie the game up at 42-42 with roughly two minutes to play in the first half.

Katie Lou hit a three and then Breanna Stewart had an amazing rejection on Elizabeth Williams (pictured at the top of the article).

Atlanta outscored Seattle 20-17 in the 2nd period as they trailed the Storm 45-43 at the half. They got it done by outrebounding Seattle 12-7 in the quarter and 24-12 in the first half. The Dream had four offensive rebounds in the 2nd quarter alone while the Storm had none.

Seattle shot the ball extremely well in the first half - 56% (18-32) and an incredible 58% (7-12) from beyond the arc. Their defense held Atlanta to 44% (19-43) and a paltry 15% (2-13) from three. The Storm also moved the ball well edging the Dream 15-10 in assists.

Jewell Loyd led Seattle with 13 points (all in the 1st quarter) and Katie Lou added 10 points in the first half. Tiffany Hayes did all the work for Atlanta, leading all scorers with 16 points through two quarters.

With the Storm leading 49-45 early in the third quarter the Atlanta Dream went on a 6-0 run to take a 51-49 lead. Atlanta was able to get three consecutive easy layups created from their defense to take the lead over Seattle.

Mercedes Russell had a couple of really impressive reverse layups that had a nice degree of difficulty. Russell had nine of her 11 points in the third period. Seattle doesn’t always need Russell to score, but when she does it’s just one more weapon that the Storm can utilize to beat teams.

Seattle went on a 14-3 run after Atlanta took the lead in the third period. At the end of the quarter, Ezi Magbegor had a beautiful rejection that came straight back into her hands. Ezi dribbled the ball up the court to lead a fastbreak opportunity and was fouled by the Dream sending her to the foul line where she calmly sank two free throws to put the Storm up 69-61 after three.

As mentioned earlier, Coach Noelle Quinn tried something new this game by putting one of her star players into the rotation to begin the 2nd and 4th quarters. In the 2nd, it was Sue Bird who joined the reserves. In the 4th, it was Breanna Stewart. This helped calm down the reserves and boosted their confidence a bit.

Stephanie Talbot caught fire to start the 4th quarter. She knocked down two three-pointers and had a beautiful driving spin-move layup in between the two triples. A quick 8-2 run to begin the quarter by Seattle pushed their lead to 14 points at 77-63.

Another three at the 5:32 mark of the 4th quarter by Talbot pushed Seattle’s lead to 22 points at 87-65. Essentially putting the game away at that point as Atlanta was forced to call another timeout. It was a part of another 10-0 run by Seattle.

11 Storm players scored in this game which is pretty incredible. Seattle outscored Atlanta 26-10 in the final period and 50-28 in the 2nd half.

I asked the coach about the biggest adjustments made over those final two quarters that led to the massive win.

“Atlanta rushes you and pressures you. But what they do give up is threes. Once you get through their initial aggression you have wide-open shots. You see Steph knocking down open ones. You see our assists with 27 and keeping our turnovers pretty low. That was the name of the game. You get past their pressure, you take care of the ball, and knock down open shots. Hitting open shots is contagious. You have one go through, now you’re teammate is knocking one down. Now everyone feels good.” Coach Noelle Quinn told me after the game.

Seattle went into a zone defense (both 2-3 and 3-2) throughout different periods of the game. I found this really interesting because one of the biggest vulnerabilities of a zone defense is giving up offensive rebounds and they went into the zone after Atlanta had already been dominating the glass with several offensive boards.

I was curious to hear from Coach Quinn on what went into that decision.

“I feel like we were also struggling with keeping (Tiffany) Hayes in front of us. And we were also struggling while we were trying to trap (Courtney) Williams. What it did was limit their ability to go at us with a head full of steam. It allowed us to give them a different look. Absolutely, rebounding is a vulnerability of a zone. If we can clean that up we’ll be OK. Honestly, I’d rather give up two’s and threes than AND1’s and let these guards get confidence and start cooking. When other teams see a zone it slows them down because they’re now thinking about the zone defense instead of man-attack. So that was the premise (for the defensive change), then thinking about the rebounding. It was about slowing the guard attack down a little bit more and keeping people in front of us.” Coach Quinn went into full detail for me about the change to the Zone defense.

Additional Analysis

If the Seattle Storm can play like that every night they’re going to hoist their 5th WNBA Trophy at the end of the season. Score over 90 points in the game? Check. Hold your opponent to under 75 points? Check. Over 50% Field goal shooting and from three-point range? Check. 5+ players score in double figures? Check. 30 points from the bench? Check.

The only thing Seattle didn’t do well in this game was rebounding and I’ll get to that later. But they did so many things right that it resulted in their most lopsided victory of the season, a 24-point crushing of the Atlanta Dream.

Their bench finally came through with Noelle Quinn subbing Katie Lou Samuelson back into the starting lineup. That meant Stephanie Talbot’s energy and scoring came off the bench in this game and really shined in the 4th quarter. 11 of Seattle’s 12 players scored in this game. Everyone found opportunities to contribute. And even if four points might not look like a lot, if every bench player scores 4-6 points a game that will result in 20-25 points per game. And with the way Seattle’s starters can score, that’s going to be enough to win almost every single game they play in.

The media asked Samuelson about her thoughts on being reinserted into the starting lineup for this game.

“I think, you know, when you're playing with Sue Bird running point—and think anyone who's on the court running with her—has an easy time to just play off of her. She's one of the greatest point guards to ever play, but I would say that yes, I feel comfortable with them. But we have rotations that we're going to need to play together and figure out everyone having good chemistry.” Katie Lou said.

Coach Noelle Quinn is hoping this will lead to better production from both players as it did Wednesday night.

“Before Katie Lou went down to the 3x3 [Olympic Qualifier] she had a very good game, and she started for us at that moment. While she was going, Steph [Talbot] filled in her role and did an amazing job. And one thing that Steph has brought consistently is energy, and that is one thing that we had lacked coming off the bench. So that flip [on the starters today] was just kind of putting the pieces back together before that break that time period where Lou left.”

This Seattle Storm team is definitely still a work in progress. And likely will be for most of this season. Replacing key starters like Natasha Howard, Alysha Clark, and a great player off the bench in Sami Whitcomb is going to take time to adjust to. Especially, defensively as all three players did really well in bringing energy and defense to the team. It’s why this team can be a little difficult to figure out.

They are 8-2 and tied for the best record in the WNBA. If I had to do my own power rankings, I’d probably put them third overall behind Connecticut and Las Vegas. Despite the fact that they are currently 2-1 against the other top teams. They’ve had a lot of close wins this season (3-0 in OT games) and a couple of other games in that first road game against Minnesota where they rallied from down 19 points or that first Wings game where they scored five points in the final seconds to force OT. Realistically, this team could just as easily be 6-4 or 7-3 compared to 9-1 (if they hadn’t collapsed against Dallas). But they certainly have proven to be a Top 3 team in the league this year. And if they can beat both Connecticut and Las Vegas on the road later this month, they’ll certainly hold a claim of being the top dog.

When the Storm are on top of their game (see the first game against Las Vegas, the 4th quarter they outscored Minnesota 37-15, the home Minnesota game where they led by 30 in the 4th quarter, or Wednesday night’s victory over Atlanta), then you see glimpses of the team’s ultimate potential. If the team can consistently play like that towards the end of the season and the playoffs, they will have just as good of a shot as any to win it all.

But we’re getting way ahead of ourselves. Most teams have only played 10 games or less, so we’re not even quite 1/3rd of the way through the regular season. The team’s bench has been a case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Seattle’s rebounding has been sub-par in a lot of their losses. There is a lot to fix and clean up. But the goal is ideally to finish the season as a top-two team to get the hugely important Double-Bye. But we’ll worry about that when there are 5-10 games left in the season, not 20-plus.

How big of a deal is Seattle’s lack of rebounding? Well, it’s honestly hard to say right now. The team is actually 4th best in the WNBA when it comes to their Rebounds Per Game average at 36.7 trailing only the Dallas Wings, Chicago Sky, and Connecticut Sun. However, Seattle does struggle with offensive rebounding coming in at 9th place (out of 12) with just 6.6 ORPG.

And while it’s true that Seattle has been out-rebounded in both of their losses this season. They’ve actually split with their opponents through the first 10 games where they’ve outrebounded their opponents in five games and have been outrebounded in five of their games.

In general, Seattle needs to improve their offensive rebounding and try to limit their opponents. Nothing kills a team more than giving up offensive rebounds. When a team is only knocking down 12% of their shots from beyond the arc as Atlanta did Wednesday night, then it’s not that big of a deal. But when you go up against an offense like Dallas and allow them too many opportunities, they’re going to make the Storm pay.

Jersey Count

I was happy to see the Storm back in their Black (Rebel) uniforms again on Wednesday. After not wearing them for seven straight games, they have now worn their Rebel uniforms in back-to-back contests. Fortunately, they came out with a win this time and improve to 2-1 on the season in the Rebels. Because the Atlanta Dream are an Eastern Conference team these games do not count against the Commissioner’s Cup standings. Seattle remains a perfect 5-0 in those games.

Records per jersey type this season:
Rebel: 2-1
Explorer: 3-1
Heroine: 3-0
Overall Record: 8-2

Up Next

Seattle (8-2) will look to capitalize on this momentum as they face the Atlanta Dream (4-5) again on Friday. The Storm won’t be able to take the Dream lightly as Seattle’s two losses have come against the 2nd game of back-to-backs with the same opponent. Losing their 2nd game against the Las Vegas Aces during the opening weekend and most recently their 2nd game of their two-game series against the Dallas Wings last Sunday. The Storm play the Dream again at 5:00 PM local time on Friday, 6/11. The game will air nationally on CBS Sports Network and locally on JoeTV (Channel 110 for Comcast Xfinity).

Editor’s Note: Thank you for your support! If you know any Storm fans that aren’t currently aware of my coverage through Substack and Twitter (@WNBAStormChaser), please let them know. Word of mouth can be super helpful and is greatly appreciated! Photo Credits to Neil Enns/Seattle Storm/WNBA. Members of the media on the call asking questions along with myself: Percy Allen (Seattle Times), Kevin Pelton (ESPN), Mazvita Maraire (Cascadiasports).