SEATTLE–The Storm faced some challenges even before it stepped on the court on Friday night.

Seattle would be without Ramu Tokashiki, who is with the Japanese National Team for the next four games, and Abby Bishop, who was nursing a hamstring injury. This meant the team was down to nine able bodies on the roster.

But with a full week of rest to prepare, the Storm came out firing and were led by Crystal Langhorne’s first double-double of the season as the Storm beat San Antonio 83-69.

“That was great,” Langhorne said of the rest. “We knew we were down on numbers so we practiced like that all week. We practiced with our different rotations, got used to playing with different people. I don’t usually get to play with [Markeisha Gatling] or [Quantira Hollingsworth] so I did a lot of that this week.”

It was the second straight win over San Antonio and evened the season series with the Stars at 2-2.

Seattle, which had already led in the game by seven, found itself trailing after back-to-back baskets from San Antonio guard Sydney Colson to give the Stars a 16-15 lead with 2:49 left in the first.

The Storm broke out of its scoring drought when Kaleena Mosqueda-Lewis hit a three to put it back on top by two. Next time down, it was Sue Bird’s turn and she drilled a three from the top of the key to go up five.

It jumpstarted a 12-0 run that carried over to the second quarter and put Seattle ahead 27-16. Bird had all 10 of her points in the first quarter.

The Stars were held to 37.5 percent from the field.

San Antonio fought back and cut the Storm lead to five in the second but Langhorne came through with two straight baskets to widen the gap to 35-26. Langhorne paced Seattle in the first half with 12.

It was the first game this season Langhorne started at her natural power forward position and dropped 22 points and grabbed 10 rebounds. She went 8-for-12 from the field.

“We had good practices,” Storm head coach Jenny Boucek said. “But it’s really tough to simulate a game unless you play like a 40-minute game and so figuring out the rotations with two really big pieces gone at the same position wasn’t easy to do.”

The Storm fended off the Stars in the second half as San Antonio could get no closer than eight.

Seattle had five players reach double digit scoring, including Markeisha Gatling and Jenna O’Hea who each tallied 11 points. O’Hea also collected six rebounds and five assists.

“We’ve been doing a whole lot of four-on-four stuff,” Gatling said. “Not really too much offense, defense, normal stuff. It was kind of easy preparing for them because we’ve played them so many times.”

The Storm weathered 19 turnovers and held San Antonio to 38.5 percent from the field.

Seattle will wrap its weekend by taking on Washington on Sunday.

NOTES

Alysha Clark scored all 10 of her points in the second half… The Storm shot 22-for-23 from the free throw line (95.7 percent)… San Antonio was led by Sophia Young-Malcolm with 18… Kayla McBride and Jia Perkins combined to shoot 6-for-26 from the field.