PHOENIX—After the Storm took an early first half lead, Phoenix and Seattle battled back and forth but the Mercury pulled away in the fourth to hand Seattle the 79-73 loss in the preseason finale on Thursday afternoon.

“We’ve been working on everything; we have a lot of new pieces,” Storm center Crystal Langhorne said. “Playing in transition, playing great defense, all those little things and I think we had a really good two first, exhibition games.”

The regular season will begin on June 6 when the Storm host the Los Angeles Sparks at KeyArena.

With the score tied at 26 in the second quarter, the Storm put on a run. Crystal Langhorne, who scored nine first half points, got it started with a layup to put the team up by two.

On the Storm’s next possession, Ramu Tokashiki found a cutting Jewell Loyd for the layup and gave it a two-bucket advantage. After a bad pass for a Phoenix turnover, Sue Bird made it hurt and hit the team’s third straight layup to extend the run to 6-0.

Abby Bishop capped off the half with a triple from the top of the circle and gave the Storm a 38-32 halftime lead. She had five points in the first half.

“We’re really playing hard for each other, together. We’re working hard and we’ve had great focus,” Storm head coach Jenny Boucek said.

Seattle went cold at the beginning of the second half and missed their first five shots, which allowed Phoenix to climb back into the game and go on a 7-0 run to take the 39-38 lead.

Langhorne brought Seattle back with back-to-back buckets and put it back on top 42-41. She finished with a team-best 17 points and seven rebounds.

The teams battled back and forth in the third and saw 10 lead changes and two ties in the period. The game saw 23 lead changes and 10 ties.

In the fourth, Kaleena Mosqueda-Lewis and Meighan Simmons hit back-to-back jumpers to give Seattle a two-point lead with 8:10 to go. Following a Brittney Grinner turnaround jumper to tie it up, Simmons came through again and hit a three for the 61-58 lead.

Simmons finished with 10 points.

Phoenix continued to battle back and got an and-one from DeWanna Bonner, who finished with a game-high 21 points, to cut the lead to one. The Mercury took the lead with 4:57 left when rookie forward Promise Amukamara hit a jumper to put them up 63-62.

With 2:58 left, Vicky McIntyre secured the offensive rebound and put it back in to cut Phoenix’s lead to one. That would be the closest the Storm would get the rest of the way.

“We’re going one day at a time, trying to get better every day and really just make everything hard on the team we’re playing every game,” Boucek said.

Cayla Francis came back down and drilled a three to give Phoenix a four-point edge.

NOTES:

Ramu Tokashiki continued to be productive off the bench, had seven points on 3-for-4 shooting in the first half, and finished with 11 points and a block… the Storm shot 50 percent from the field in the first half while holding Phoenix to 35 percent… 13 players played at least 10 minutes.