With the Seattle Storm’s brutal start to the season – a league-high five games in the first nine days, four of them on the road – now behind them, Head Coach Brian Agler was ready to declare the start neither a great success nor a failure, but about what could be expected.

“To me, it could have been disastrous, but it also could have been a great scenario if we won all the games,” said Agler after the Storm practiced Tuesday. “Get five games under your belt, win all five of them, that would have been perfect. We landed somewhere in between there. We’re in decent shape. We’re not in great shape, and we’re not in poor shape. We’re in the thick of things. Now we get some time to get some practice.”

Tuesday’s was the first of three practices for the Storm before taking on the Minnesota Lynx Friday on Dads & Daughters® Night (7:00 p.m., 1150-AM KKNW, ). In that span, Agler hopes to see the team continue to improve, to prepare for this weekend’s slate of games and stay fresh for them. The first five games of the season have provided some focal points for improvement.

“I think there are some areas,” he said, “that we’re sort of lagging on right now – rebounding, our assist-to-turnover ratio is not as positive as I’d like it be. It’s positive [1.08, second in the WNBA], but not as much as it could be or should be. I’d like to see us get to the free throw line. It’s amazing to me – I don’t know how many free throws Lauren (Jackson) has shot [4.8 per game], but for how physical people play her, it’s amazing to me that she doesn’t get more attempts. I know she plays away from the basket, but she’s also made a concerted attempt to play inside this year. That’s an area we want to get better at.

“Defensively, there’s some things we’re doing real well, but I’m not satisfied with that. My gauge on our defense is we want to be as good as we can be, not compared to other people. Like we’re giving up the fewest amount of points – well, that’s good, but is that the best we can be? I don’t think that is right now. Offensively, we want to be more consistent, be able to execute a little bit better. I think a lot of that has to do with lack of practice together, getting people acclimated.”

The player who should benefit most from the practice time is center Suzy Batkovic-Brown, who has had limited time on the court in practice since joining the Storm last Sunday. I wrote about Batkovic-Brown’s process of fitting in with the Storm in today’s feature story.

The time off will help guard Shannon Johnson for the opposite reason – she needs not to play but to stay off her knee after spraining the lateral meniscus in her left knee in the season opener. Johnson played through the pain, but it forced the Storm to limit her minutes, and the rest will help. Johnson did not practice Tuesday.

“We really wanted to limit her minutes on this trip, try to give her some rest here this week so she’s ready to go,” Agler explained. “It didn’t help our depth situation because that means big minutes for T (Tanisha Wright) and Sue (Bird), but fortunately we rose to the occasion in Minnesota. I do think Shannon, mainly in the Minnesota game, her minutes were really valuable because she came in and hit a shot when we needed a shot and gave us depth defensively.”

A positive development from the road trip, in Agler’s eyes, was the play of center Janell Burse off the bench. In the three games, she averaged 6.7 points and 2.7 rebounds in the three games in just over 12 minutes a night.

“I consider Janell a starter now,” said Agler. “I think she’s done well, she’s feeling better about things. She and I talked over the weekend about minutes and things like that. The thing I like about Janell that’s jumped out at me is how active she can be defensively. Then also I think the thing that’s surprised a lot of people is her ability to shoot the ball on the perimeter a little bit.”

While Burse could move into the starting lineup down the road, Agler is also pleased with the play of Camille Little in the starting five. He said there needs to be “a glaring reason” to make a change.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 16th, 2009 at 6:28 pm and is filed under practice notes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.