The Seattle Storm just defeated a team tied for the best record in the WNBA.
Now they’ll host the league-worst Indiana Fever on Friday night.
The Storm (12-7) beat the visiting Las Vegas Aces 88-78 on Wednesday night, dropping the Aces into a tie with the defending champion Chicago Sky for the league’s best record and pulling fourth-place Seattle within two games of the top spot.
“From top to bottom, everyone contributed in a great way,” Storm coach Noelle Quinn said. “I thought we were locked in defensively. We shot the ball well obviously, but it was an effort on both sides of the ball, which is amazing to see against an opponent that’s one of the top offensively rated teams.”
Seattle held Las Vegas 22 points below its scoring average and forced 22 turnovers, leading to 23 points.
“We got stops,” said Jewell Loyd, who led the Storm with 24 points. “That was a big part of how we were able to get good shots.”
The Fever are coming off two losses at Phoenix in three days, 83-71 on Monday and 99-78 on Wednesday.
Indiana was hurt by low-scoring second halves in both losses. The Fever scored 13 fourth-quarter points and 30 second-half points on Monday and 15 third-quarter points and 35 second-half points Wednesday.
The defense also was problematic Wednesday, when the Mercury tied their season high for points as seven players reached double figures.
“I felt like we had low energy defensively,” Fever coach Carlos Knox said.
Indiana had just two double-figure scorers as Kelsey Mitchell posted 21 points and Victoria Vivians added 13.
“I think we had too many empty possessions,” Mitchell said. “It was a lot of times where we got to a point where they did miss a shot, and, when they did, we didn’t convert. It made our offense down the stretch really, really difficult.”
Indiana is 0-3 on a road trip that concludes against Seattle.
