SEATTLE (AP) \u2014 Zia Cooke scored 16 of her career-high 25 points in the first half, rookie Flau\u2019jae Johnson had her best game of the season and the Seattle Storm beat the Connecticut Sun 77-59 on Friday night.<\/p>\n
Johnson, the No. 8 pick in the recent WNBA draft, had 17 points, seven rebounds and five assists, all season bests. Natisha Hiedeman added 11 points for the Storm (2-4), who avenged a last-second loss to the Sun on Wednesday. Seattle won 89-82 at Connecticut in the second game of the season.<\/p>\n
Diamond Miller had 13 points for Connecticut (1-6) and Aaliyah Edwards scored 10. Brittney Griner missed her fourth straight game with a rib injury.<\/p>\n
Seattle, which trailed 21-19 after one quarter, took a 37-28 lead at halftime as Cooke outscored the Sun in the second quarter 8-7.<\/p>\n
The Storm led by 16 in the third quarter but the Sun cut the deficit to seven points when they opened the fourth with a 3-pointer. Cooke made a free throw and Johnson hit a 3-pointer and the Sun never cut the deficit to single digits after that.<\/p>\n
The Sun made nine baskets in the first quarter and totaled 11 over the final three quarters, finishing at 35%.<\/p>\n
The Storm were short-handed in the front court with Dominique Malonga missing her third straight game in concussion protocol. Veteran Ezi Magbegor has yet to play and Awa Fam, the recent No. 3 pick, just arrived in Seattle from Spain. There has been no announcement when Fam, who helped Valencia win the Spanish League championship, would make her debut.<\/p>\n
To help Seattle, Joyner Holmes was signed earlier in the day and she had two points, five rebounds and three blocks in 15 minutes.<\/p>\n
Up next<\/p>\n
Sun: At Golden State on Monday for the third game of a five-game western road trip.<\/p>\n
Storm: Stay home for a second straight two-game set with Washington beginning Sunday. <\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
AP WNBA: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/wnba-basketball<\/p>\n
The Associated Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SEATTLE (AP) \u2014 Zia Cooke scored 16 of her career-high 25 points in the first half, rookie Flau\u2019jae…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":687939,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[629],"tags":[49,48,82,630],"class_list":["post-687938","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports","tag-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/687938","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=687938"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/687938\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/687939"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=687938"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=687938"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=687938"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}