Sparks Ready for Round 2

There hasn’t been much the Sacramento Monarchs have wanted to remember lately about their games against the Sparks. The Sparks have won five of the last six, including all three this season.

But the Monarchs can’t want to forget the game on July 19.

Both teams were coming off the All-Star break. The 12-8 Monarchs were at home, poised to show the 17-3 Sparks they were going to be a factor in the Western Conference race.

Instead, the Sparks won, 83-68, handing the Monarchs their worst lost of the season.

“It’s always tough when someone comes into your house and embarrasses you like that,” said Monarch guard Ticha Penicheiro. “They had a perfect game, and our intensity and energy wasn’t there. And they really took advantage of it.”

That game, and two others that were played in Los Angeles, may not have any leftover effect on the teams when they meet tonight at Arco Arena in the first game of the WNBA Western Conference finals. The winner of the best-of-three series advances to the WNBA Finals.

The Sparks and Monarchs finished first and second in the West. The Monarchs won five of their last six games and the Sparks 11 of their last 12. Both teams swept their first-round playoff series, the Sparks ending the Houston Comets’ four-year reign as league champions and the Monarchs eliminating the Utah Starzz.

“That game doesn’t matter now,” Penicheiro said of last month’s Spark victory at Sacramento. “This is the playoffs. Everything is back to zero.”

No WNBA team has caused much anxiety for the Sparks--not even the New York Liberty, which beat the Sparks, 82-69, on June 24 at New York.

“We’ve remained confident all year in our ability to get the job done,” Tamecka Dixon said. “I don’t think any team has taken that confidence away. The teams that beat us caught us on a night where we weren’t hitting on all cylinders.”

The Monarchs believe they can be the team that puts fear into the Sparks.

After the July 19 debacle, the Monarchs played the Sparks tough, losing by two and five points at Staples Center. They averaged 71.7 points a game during the regular season, second in the league behind the Sparks (76.3). They were also second to the Sparks in rebounding and led the WNBA in three-point shooting (38.5%) and blocked shots (158).

Like the Sparks, the Monarchs love to run. But Yolanda Griffith said the Monarchs must gear down the Sparks’ speed to a crawl.

“We have to eliminate their transition offense as much as possible,” Griffith said. “We have to get back defensively. And we can’t allow them to allow us one shot, and one shot only.”

Some tension between the teams is already building. The Monarchs were put off by Lisa Leslie’s comments Monday after the Sparks’ victory over the Comets, when she said the Sparks have only four games left before winning their first championship.

Monarch reserve center Kara Wolters, who won an NCAA championship with Connecticut in 1995 and a WNBA title with Houston in 1999, quickly took to the offensive.

“[The Sparks] have a cockiness about them,” she told the Sacramento Bee. “They talk the talk but they haven’t yet walked the walk. The act like they are the Lakers.”

All that was needed was for Spark Coach Michael Cooper to pull a Phil Jackson and start referring to Sacramento as “a hick town.”

Cooper wasn’t interested in stirring up the populace any further: “I just tell our players, ‘Be sure you believe in what you say.”But everything we’ve talked about is winning the championship and what steps we have to take along the way. For Lisa to say on TV, ‘We’re looking for four more wins,’ hey, yes we are. We can’t talk about that? It’s up to others to stop us.”