Fowles has 19 to lift Sky over Storm for first win of the season

You would think the smiles would have been wider, that there would have been an abundance of high-fives and maybe a few whoops and hollers.

The Chicago Sky had just won its first game of the season, over the previously undefeated Seattle Storm no less.

But Thursday's 84-75 victory at Allstate Arena didn't put the Sky over the top with excitement. In fact, most of the players walked off the court quietly and looked relatively solemn.

It's not that they were unhappy with the win. No sir. They needed it desperately after an 0-4 start, and it did provide an instant sense of relief.

Rather, the Sky was simply unhappy with how the win shaped up.

At one point in the second half, the Sky boasted a 19-point lead. It looked like victory was going to come as easy as a summer breeze.

Yet, in the waning minutes, Seattle cut its deficit to as few as 5 points.

So now that the Sky has gotten the monkey of going winless off its back, the next item on the to-do list is to win with authority. The next opportunity to do so is Saturday (7 p.m. Comcast Channel 100) when the Sky (1-4) visits the Minnesota Lynx.

"It feels good to get this win and we're happy about it," said Sky forward Cathrine Kraayeveld, who finished with 14 points, including some clutch 3-pointers and free throws down the stretch. "But we just know we can do better. Those last four to five minutes just really wasn't our best game.

"We're happy that we played well enough to get the win, but we have to play that way for 40 minutes, not 35 or 36 minutes."

Those 35 or 36 minutes were pretty darn good, though.

The Sky not only got another solid effort of 6-foot-6 center Sylvia Fowles, who scored a game-high 19 points on 6-of-9 shooting, but the reserves also stepped it up.

They outscored the Storm bench 34-28.

Two of the Sky's four double-figure scorers in the game came off the bench in rookie guard Epiphanny Prince and Erin Thorn, both of whom had 13 points.

"We want to always come in and be aggressive," Prince said. "We don't want people to know that there's a difference between us and the first five."

Reserve forward Tamera Young also came up big for the Sky. She scored 4 points, dished out 3 big assists and was ultra active on the defensive end.

"It starts with practice. Our job is to make the starters better and that helps us get better," Young said. "We brought energy and intensity to practice and I think that just got brought over to the game."

The Sky defense was intense from start to finish and limited Seattle (4-1) to a 39 percent shooting clip from the field. The Storm's big-time scorers were also held in check.

Lauren Jackson, who came in averaging 20 points, scored a team-high 15 for Seattle. Swin Cash was down 6 points off her 18-point average with 12 points.