SEATTLE–The Storm has played the past few games being short handed. Two games ago, it lost Ramu Tokashiki to the Japanese National Team and Abby Bishop has been battling a hamstring injury.

On Thursday, Sue Bird rested and meant that Seattle was down to eight able bodies against a Tulsa team that had won five in a row and had just clinched a playoff spot.

Despite another solid performance from Jewell Loyd, the short bench and the Tulsa momentum was too much for the Storm as it dropped the finale of its six-game homestand 85-67 on Thursday night.

“We’ve got several people playing out of position right now and, as small as that may seem, it can throw you out of sync,” Storm head coach Jenny Boucek said. “Angel [Goodrich]hadn’t played a lot lately, even in practice. We weren’t in sync with one another and our systems are based on synchronicity. We got a lot of weird combinations in right now.”

The Storm will hit the road for two beginning on Sunday when it heads to Loyd’s hometown of Chicago to take on the Sky.

After Crystal Langhorne hit a tough hook in the lane to make it 30-36, Tulsa went on an 11-2 run to move ahead 47-32. The Shock outscored Seattle 25-10 in the quarter and got 15 first half points from Odyssey Sims.

Sims, who had scored 30 points in the team’s last game, dropped 24 points on Thursday.

Tulsa opened the third on a 10-2 run and led by as much as 23.

The Storm began to chip away and got five straight points from Kaleena Mosqueda-Lewis to cut the lead to 16. Loyd, who scored a team-high 16 points to go along with a career-high six assists, had six in the quarter.

“She has gotten a lot better this year at doing that,” Boucek said. of Loyd playing point guard. “I even told her tonight I’d like to call some plays on her own. Before when she was playing point earlier in the season, I would give her all the play calls and tonight I told her to try to think through it and figure out what to call and I think she did a very good job. She’s getting better.”

“I have to play a little more point, kind of run the team a little bit,” Loyd said. “[Bird’s] been mentoring me a lot and I’ve been trying to pick her brain a little but just trying to get everyone involved and make the right decisions.”

Jenna O’Hea continued to develop her game and had 13 points, three rebounds, and three assists. Over the last three games, O’Hea is averaging 10.6 points along with four rebounds and four assists off the bench.

“She is really evolving from a shooter to a play maker, which we are really pleased with,” Boucek said. “She has worked very hard with Ryan [Webb] on her pick-and-roll game, her ball handling, be able to do things off the dribble and not just be what she was years ago, which was probably a spot shooter.”

The Storm came out on fire and quickly took a 12-10 lead on an outlet pass to Loyd who converted the layup and got the foul. Loyd and Langhorne led the way in the first as the pair combined for 14 of the team’s 24 first quarter points.

Langhorne finished with 12 points on 5-for-7 from the field and grabbed eight rebounds.

NOTES

Kaleena Mosqueda-Lewis finished with 12 points and grabbed three rebounds… Tulsa forward Plenette Pierson scored 17 points on 7-for-10 from the field… Tulsa had three players grab eight rebounds apiece.