SEATTLE – Nneka Ogwumike tallied 20 points, and the Seattle Storm scored 30 points off Chicago turnovers to beat the Sky on Saturday night inside Climate Pledge Arena, 79-69.

All five starters for Seattle were in double figures. Ezi Magbegor had 13, Gabby Williams and Skylar Diggins tallied 12 apiece and Brittney Sykes chipped in 11. Erica Wheeler had 11 off the bench.

The Storm, who have won five of their last six, forced Chicago into 22 turnovers, and the 30 points from those miscues was within one of their season high.

Saturday’s game was the first of four straight at home to conclude the regular season and came on the heels of a 4-1 road trip, capped by Tuesday’s 21-point comeback to win by 14 at league-leading Minnesota.

“Being able to utilize our schedule for focus and discipline has been important,” said Ogwumike, whose 20 points put her at 746 for the year, now the second-highest single-season mark in team history. (Breanna Stewart had 742 in 2018.)

“We want to be able to show that we can bring that momentum -- especially with all the tight games we’ve been playing in August -- and turn that around into wins, and creating hopefully what will be a four-game home winning streak going into the playoffs,” Ogwumike added. “I think the timing of that is crucial for us.”

Seattle scored the first six points of the game, never trailed and was never tied on the way to completing a sweep of the three-game season series against the Sky.

Up by 12 late in the third quarter, the Storm saw that margin cut to five at 57-52 in the opening moments of the fourth. Seattle then put the next seven points on the board to go up 64-52. That was part of a 14-4 run, extending the lead 71-56 with 4:25 remaining.

The defense was instrumental during that stretch, as Seattle did not allow the Sky a fourth-quarter field goal until 6:36 remained in the game.

“It was just executing schemes and being aggressive on defense, just knowing that Chicago is a great team,” Magbegor said. “They go on runs, so we were just really focused on stopping that.”

The Sky never got closer than nine after that.

“We’re going to have to continue that momentum from the road and show up and play the way that we can play in front of our home crowd,” Head Coach Noelle Quinn said. “We didn’t have some of our best moments during the game, but we had some other moments that picked us up, (some of) the positive things that we’ve learned in the course of the past few weeks that could be put to the test today.”

The Storm were a perfect 18-for-18 at the free throw line. That was tied for the fifth-most attempts without a miss in team history, and it also tied for the most attempts without a miss in the league this season.

Angel Reese led Chicago with 20 points and made it a double-double with 10 rebounds.

UP NEXT

The Storm will host the Los Angeles Sparks for its annual Back to School night on Monday, September 1. Tipoff for the matchup is at 7:00 pm PT and will be broadcast locally on CW Seattle and streamed on NBA TV and Prime Video for those in Washington State.