ATLANTA DREAM NOTES
- Atlanta and Seattle faced off tonight for the second in eight days.
- Atlanta limited Seattle to 28 first-half points, the lowest total allowed to an opponent in the opening 20 minutes of the season and matches the lowest allowed in any half to any opponent this season (28 at SA, 5/14/16).
- Sancho Lyttle posted her team-leading third double-double of the season with 22 points and 11 rebounds. She also contributed three steals in Tuesday’s 77-64 victory.
- Lyttle’s 22-point effort marked the first time she has notched 20 or more points since July 22, 2014 at Minnesota when she recorded 26 in a double-overtime loss to the Lynx.
- Angel McCoughtry notched 18 points for her 17th double-digit scoring effort of the season.
- Atlanta opened the fourth quarter with a 9-0 spurt over the initial 2:30 to flip a two-point deficit at the end of the third quarter to a 61-54 Dream advantage with 7:30 minutes left to play in regulation. The Dream outscored the Storm 25-10 overall over the final 10 minutes.
- Elizabeth Williams contributed a career-high seven blocks in Tuesday’s win.
- Tonight’s win over Seattle snapped Atlanta’s season-worst six-game losing streak and improved its home record 5-4 overall.
- Atlanta improves to 9-2 overall on the season when it makes more free throws than its opponent. The Dream are 0-7 when they make fewer than their opponent from the charity stripe.
SEATTLE STORM NOTES
- Breanna Stewart registered her seventh double-double of the season with a 11 points and 11 rebounds.
Atlanta Dream vs. Seattle Storm Postgame Quotes
July 5, 2016 – 7 p.m. at Philips Arena – Atlanta
Atlanta Dream Head Coach Michael Cooper
Opening Statement…
“Seattle is a very good basketball team and they are not indicative of their record, but so are we. I thought the things that we did tonight like staying with our defense, schemes that we wanted to run, and moving the basketball definitely helps us. With 16 turnovers that means we’re not being a selfish basketball team and it means we’re a very good basketball team. It doesn’t hurt to rebound either. We had Sancho Lyttle with us and she hadn’t been asserting herself but we were asking that of her tonight and she did it. When Lyttle plays well, that gives us a better chance to win because it lets everyone else add on to what they have already established.”
On tonight’s success…
“Defense… and some of our offense. I’ve been giving this team the freedom to shoot and sometimes the ones that shoot the ball a lot tend take it on themselves to make shots, but that’s not what wins games. You have to move the ball, have continuity, take the ‘team shot’ and not just their shot. I thought we did that extremely well tonight”
On stopping Breanna Stewart…
“Sancho Lyttle played.”
Elizabeth Williams
On anchoring the defense…
“We know when we rebound well against teams it helps us both offensively and defensively. The rebounding was big today.”
On stopping Seattle offense…
“We don’t want anyone to score on us like they did last week. Every one of us took some pride in ourselves, in our team and in our defense. We said to ourselves ‘Hey, we’re not going to let that happen again’. I think the effort by everyone was amazing.”
Sancho Lyttle
On tonight’s performance…
“We stuck to the plan tonight. Previously I think since we were losing a couple we stopped believing in ourselves and tonight we just got back to where we were at the beginning of the season. We came up with a win.”
On guarding Breanna Stewart…
“She’s their go-to player. When you are facing against that you just have to stick with them. It is easier when there is a go-to player defensively because when teams don’t have that you really have to be focused on everyone on the floor. It was my job tonight and I just had to stay there.”
Seattle Storm Head Coach Jenny Boucek
On mindset coming into today…
“We had a clear understanding of what they liked to do and what they are good at and we just did not get it done.”
On Dream getting shots they wanted in 4th quarter…
“We did not do a very good job of protecting the paint. We did not rebound well. They got very aggressive and we did not resist that.”
Jewell Loyd
On Atlanta’s scoring streak…
“It started before the 4th because we had a lot of turnovers. They had been on a five-point run and it was not the end of the world, but the momentum led them to a strong finish.”
On difference of today’s game versus last week…
“I think at home we had a little more energy which helped us offensively and defensively a little bit. We did not play how we wanted to.”
Breanna Stewart
On adjustments made for second half…
“I think we just tried to attack the basket more. I don’t think we have had such few points in one half in the entire season. It seemed as though we were very slow offensively. We tried to fix that in the second half.”
On Dream’s adjustment to guarding Stewart…
“They continued to have second and third rotations. They did a really good job on us defensively in limiting our amount of points, especially early on.”