Leslie Says There Are No Excuses

Lisa Leslie wouldn’t blame the Sparks’ lackluster performance on road weariness, even though it was the third game of a five-game trip.

“Sure, it’s been a long trip, but that’s no excuse,” she said. “If we’d been in L.A., we’d have beaten them. We just played hesitant tonight. We knew they’d come after us aggressively, we prepared for it but we just didn’t do it.”

TONIGHT

at Charlotte, 4:30 PDT

* Site--Charlotte Coliseum.

* Records--Los Angeles 2-2, Charlotte 1-1.

* Record vs. Sting (1998)--2-1.

* Update--It will be a Purdue Boilermaker reunion tonight in Charlotte between the Sparks’ Ukari Figgs and the Sting’s Stephanie White-McCarty, who now prefers just McCarty. They helped Purdue win a national championship and their coach, Carolyn Peck, is now coach of the WNBA Orlando Miracle. McCarty is averaging 10.5 points. Figgs is the Sparks’ starting point guard, having beat out Penny Toler.