SEATTLE–Once the smoke cleared of the opening night festivities, the Storm found itself trailing early but a strong performance that stemmed the second and third quarters pushed Seattle to the 86-61 win over Los Angeles on Saturday night. “In training camp, we really started to gel and you never know where you’re going to fall when the first game comes,” Storm guard Renee Montgomery said. “It’s good to see that what we were practicing in training camp that we transferred it over.”

With Crystal Langhorne having scored the last two baskets of the first half to put Seattle up 35-32, the Storm carried that momentum into the second and hit three straight layups to go along with a pair of free throws from Jewell Loyd to take a 43-32 lead.

Stemming from the second quarter and into the third, the Storm went on a 12-0 run and held Los Angeles scoreless for 2:07 during that stretch.

Langhorne, who had six points during the run, finished with 18 points and nine rebounds.

Seattle went cold early and missed its first four shots of the game and trailed 4-0 but battled back and went on an 8-2 run that was jump started on a three by Jenna O’Hea.

WIth the Storm leading 8-6, Los Angeles answered with a run of its own and scored the next eight points with four coming from newcomer Erin Phillips to take a 14-8 lead.

But Montgomery brought the Storm back and played a part of the scoring in six of the team’s last seven possessions of the first as she had eight points and an assist to help close the quarter on a 10-4 run, putting them up 20-18.

She finished the half with eight points and ended with a game-high 19 points on 6-for-10 shooting to go along with five assists. “We have great scorers off the bench, especially, you saw with Renee,” Langhorne said. “That’s how we want to play. Other teams are going to get tired and we want to play a lot of people and get everyone going so we can keep running.

“If our bench is going to play like that, we’re going to be hard to play against.”

Midway through the second and the score tied at 24, Sue Bird took to the lane and pulled up to hit the jumper. Bird continued to be part of the action on the next possession as she found Quanitra Hollingsworth for the layup to put the Storm up by four.

After a bucket from the Sparks to cut the lead back to two, Montgomery found Alysha Clark on the wing for the three to put the Storm back up by five.

Clark had five points and six rebounds in the first half and finished with 11 points off the bench.
“When you have everything going, it’s really fun to play like that,” Montgomery said. “‘The Bench Mob,’ we’re going to have to come through. We kept a good poise about ourselves and trusted what we do.”

Los Angeles retook the lead with less than a minute in the half but Seattle had one last run in them and got back-to-back buckets from Crystal Langhorne to give the Storm a 35-32 halftime lead.

With that last basket, she reached 3,000 career points.

NOTES
Prior to the game, the Storm added Markeisha Gatling and Angel Goodrich via waivers. Gatling spent last season with the Chicago Sky after being selected with the 10th overall pick in the 2014 WNBA Draft. Goodrich comes to Seattle after spending her first two seasons with Tulsa… the bench played a major role in the scoring in the first half as they outscored the Los Angeles bench 19-2 in the first half with eight coming from Renee Montgomery… outscored the Sparks bench 40-16.