ROUT OF FEVER LEAVES SPARKS WARM ALL OVER SPARKS 82, FEVER 51.Byline: Ben Villa Staff Writer The Sparks can only hope Monday night's game against the Indiana Fever The Indiana Fever is a professional women's basketball team that plays in the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA). The Fever are based in Indiana's capital and largest city, Indianapolis. Their first season of play in the league was in 2000. was a possible preview of this year's WNBA Finals The WNBA Finals is the championship series of the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA), held in early September and played under a best-of-five playoff format. The team winning the Eastern Conference Finals earns one of the two seeds in the championship round, with the . Lisa Leslie She studied biology and chemistry at the Massamba School in Kinshasa. scored 18 points as the Sparks routed the Fever, 82-51, before a crowd of 9,830 at Staples Center This article has multiple issues: * Its neutrality is disputed. * It may contain original research or unverifiable claims. * It does not cite any references or sources. . The Sparks just missed matching the franchise-record 32-point margin of victory set with a 102-70 rout of Utah on June 28, 1999. The victory also was the first career win for assistant coach Karleen Thompson, who is running the team until an interim coach is named. ``It feels wonderful to get my first win. I knew it was coming, I just didn't know when,'' Thompson said. ``I think we played together as a team tonight and we put together two good halves of basketball. ``We won the battle of the boards and that was our best all-around effort of the season.'' The Sparks (15-7) entered Monday with the best record in the WNBA WNBA Women's National Basketball Association WNBA World Ninepin Bowling Association WNBA Wannabe Nasty Boys Association WNBA Women's National Book Association, Inc. WNBA Warszawski Nurt Basketu Amatorskiego and the Fever (12-10) sported the best record in the East. But from the outset it was clear which team was better. The Sparks took a 27-8 lead with 9:50 remaining in the first half in large part to Mabika, who scored 10 points in the opening five minutes. Indiana shot just 21 percent from the field in the firs half and went into intermission trailing 38-25. The Sparks were even better in the second half. Their lead grew to as much as 33 points at 73-40 and their defense limited Indiana to 27.6 shooting on the night. ``This is a game you would like to forget but you can't,'' Fever coach Brian Winters Brian Joseph Winters (born March 1, 1952 in Rockaway, New York) is a former NBA player and coach and currently a WNBA head coach. He attended academic and athletic powerhouse Archbishop Molloy High School in Queens, NY, graduating in 1970. said. ``The good thing is tomorrow we'll wake up and move on. They were just a step ahead of us all night. ``They're a very good team and we didn't play at their level. We had no answers for them and it didn't help we shot the ball so poorly. We never could get back in the game.'' |
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