SACRAMENTO — The Sacramento Monarchs used their trademark defense to help rally for their latest win.

Kristin Haynie scored a season-high 14 points, and Kara Lawson and Nicole Powell had 13 apiece to help the Monarchs beat the San Antonio Silver Stars 81-74 Wednesday night.

Yolanda Griffith had 10 points and Ticha Penicheiro added nine, including five free throws down the stretch, as Sacramento (19-13) pulled one game behind second-place San Antonio. Both teams have two games remaining in the regular season.

“It was important for us to defend our home court,” said Lawson, who shot 6-for-9 from the floor. “One of the things we’ve done in the past is protect our home court during the playoffs. That’s a message we wanted to send out tonight that this is still a tough place to get a win.”

Sophia Young and Becky Hammon scored 19 points apiece and Camille Little added 11 points and eight rebounds for the Silver Stars (20-12), who missed an opportunity to pull into a first-place tie with Phoenix, which holds a one-game lead.

It’s likely the two teams will meet next week in the opening round of the playoffs, and San Antonio still has the edge for the home-court advantage.

“We’re real familiar with the Monarchs and they know us too, so if we meet in the playoffs it’s going to be an interesting series,” said Hammon, who made five 3-pointers but shot just 1-for-8 in the second half.

Credit the Monarchs defense with stopping Hammon and the Silver Stars, who shot 56 percent in the opening half when they took a 43-36 lead. San Antonio struggled in the decisive fourth quarter, getting outscored 24-12 and committing five turnovers.

“We felt our defense wasn’t effective in the first half so we tried to be more aggressive and take away their swagger,” Penicheiro said. “All of a sudden we went to work and were getting turnovers, steals, converting fastbreaks and taking over the game. When we win it’s always our defense.”

Trailing by 11 points early in the third quarter, the Monarchs pulled to 59-54 on Powell’s layup in the final minute of the period.

After Hammon’s 3-pointer pushed the Silver Stars’ lead to eight with 5 seconds left, Haynie started an 11-0 run with a 3 of her own at the third quarter buzzer.

Haynie opened the fourth with a jumper 19 seconds in and Lawson followed with one of her own with 7:49 to go that gave the Monarchs a 65-62 lead.

Little’s layup tied the score for the final time, at 69-69 with 5:17 left, but Haynie made her fourth straight 3-pointer to give Sacramento the lead for good 26 seconds later.

Vickie Johnson hit 1 of 2 free throws to pull the Silver Stars to 73-72 with 2:21 to go, but Rebekkah Brunson made a layup and Penicheiro hit four straight free throws to seal the win.

“We didn’t handle their defense very well in the second half,” Hammon said. “They feed off your mistakes and you can’t let a team like that hang around, which we did.”

The Monarchs had no answer for Hammon in the first half. The WNBAs third-leading scorer made four 3s and scored 16 points, helping the Silver Stars to their seven-point lead at the break.