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Mercury-Storm Preview

Jul 26, 2010 - 6:41 PM By ZAC POWELL STATS Writer

Phoenix (10-12) at Seattle (20-2), 9:30 p.m. EDT

The Seattle Storm and Phoenix Mercury are in the midst of making WNBA history.

These teams look to continue their strong play when they meet at KeyArena on Tuesday night.

The Storm are the second team in league history to open 20-2, while the Mercury (10-12) broke a record by scoring over 90 points in each of their last seven games.

Phoenix will now head to Seattle and try to snap the Storm's 11-game win streak while also becoming the first opposing team to win there this season. The Storm are 11-0 at KeyArena, with their last loss coming to the Mercury in their home finale last season.

Scoring points on their three-game trip hasn't been a problem thus far for the Mercury. Phoenix won 123-91 over Tulsa on Thursday and beat Minnesota 127-124 in double overtime Saturday in the highest-scoring game in WNBA history.

The Mercury have set the league scoring mark in each of their last two games.

On Saturday, they rallied from 14 down in the fourth quarter and got 32 points from Candice Dupree and 31 from Diana Taurasi.

"We have a lot of veterans on this team," Dupree said. "They know how to stay composed and fight through how many ever overtimes we need to get the win."

Taurasi, who scored 11 of her 31 points in the second overtime, is averaging 29.4 in the last five games and leads the league with 23.8 per contest.

The Storm earned a 75-59 home win over the Shock on Sunday to become the second team ever to start 20-2. The Houston Comets opened 25-2 in 1998.

Seattle, though, hasn't been dominant lately.

It took a late second-half surge to knock off last-place Tulsa, and the Storm's previous four wins came by a an average of 4.8 points. They won 111-107 in triple overtime at Phoenix on July 14.

"All of a sudden, because we have the best record in the league, people expect us to win by 20 every game," point guard Sue Bird said. "I've experienced that actually in college (at Connecticut). It's not something we expect. We know this league is way too good."

Seattle has its own prolific scorer in forward Lauren Jackson, who is second in the league with 21.8 points per game while also averaging 9.2 rebounds.

The Storm have won all three meeting against second-place Phoenix this season. Bird's 3-pointer with 6.4 seconds left in the third overtime two weeks ago lifted the Storm, who got 31 points and 18 rebounds from Jackson.

Taurasi scored 44, coming within three points of the WNBA record of 47 she shares with Jackson.