Sunday, June 19

The Sun's longest road trip of the season is off to a late start. The bus that will take the team to Logan Airport is reportedly somewhere on the Mohegan Sun property, but not in the loading dock area where the team awaits. The players are unfazed. Less than 12 hours earlier they have avenged their only loss of the season by beating the Shock, 73-63. It is the team's 7th straight win, a franchise record. It will take more than a late-arriving bus to rattle this group -The flight from Boston to L.A. is packed, which will be a common sight on this trip. The days of being able to spread out in coach are a thing of the past - At the luggage carousel in Los Angeles, a celebrity sighting. Richard Dreyfus appears out of a crowd, makes a dash for the carousel, snatches his bag and hustles off. He appears to be moving quickly in order to avoid recognition. He shouldn¡¦t have worried. No one gives him a second glance ¡K Southern California weather at its best: 75 degrees, clear blue skies, minimal L.A. smog. Work to be done, though. The team has one hour to unpack and then head to practice. Coming off a long flight and a game the previous night Coach Thibault admits "we'll go easy"... The team's hotel in Los Angeles is gorgeous. One glance from the balcony in my room provides the defining view: million dollar yachts floating lazily in and out of the marina. Not bad.

Monday, June 20

The team had its shootaround this morning at Loyola-Marymount. One look at this Southern California campus and the first question is obvious: how does anyone here concentrate on studying? ... On game day I prepare for the broadcast, but I had to find some time today for one diversion. Sun general manager Chris Sienko, media relations director Bill Tavares and I took a walk to the Venice Beach boardwalk. In addition to its natural beauty - the Pacific Ocean and the Santa Monica mountains provide the backdrop- Venice Beach is a time capsule. Some who set up shop on the beach in the 60's have yet to leave. Street artists, vendors and musicians are everywhere. Tavares broke off for a few minutes to pump iron in the outdoor gymnasium famously known as Muscle Beach. Some of the well-toned regulars watched in awe... This is not true of course but Bill asked me to give it a shot... Although the bus ride from the hotel to the Staples Center is not far in miles, extra time is allowed because of the infamous freeway traffic. But it's not bad tonight ... How good are the Sun right now? They turn the ball over 19 times and still score 90 points and win by 20. Laura Summerton, the 21-year-old Australian activated that day in place of the injured Jamie Carey, calmly swishes two free throws to get the Sun to the 90-point mark. For a team that played on Saturday night, traveled all day on Sunday, the Sun look remarkably refreshed on Monday ... Nykesha Sales has the range tonight: 26 points. The franchise record winning streak is now eight ... The Sparks reaction: "They're good, very good, but we didn't have any energy." said coach Henry Bibby. Said guard Tamecka Dixon: "We didn't play Sparks basketball. For us it starts with energy." Note to the rest of the WNBA: energy is recommended this season when you play Connecticut.

Tuesday, June 21

First day of summer. Watched a local Los Angeles newscast last night and the happy-talk anchors were hailing the arrival of the new season: "hooray, summer's here!" What? It's Los Angeles, for goodness sake. We're headed to a place where they need summer: Seattle. Cloudy skies, cooler temperatures the order of the day in the Emerald City. Back to where the Sun¡¦s season ended in the Finals last October. We stay in the same hotel. Taj McWilliams Franklin walks into the lobby and says,"hmmm, bad memories of this place" A two-hour afternoon practice is scheduled for the afternoon. Just as the team gets on the bus the skies open and a thunderous storm rolls through. Rain in Seattle? Not a headline. But despite the weather, this is a great city. There is natural beauty - Puget Sound, Lake Washington and Mount Rainier in the distance - and there is abundant culture. And there is coffee. Everywhere. A Starbucks it seems on every block.

Wednesday, June 22

Early wakeup -the body clock is still on east coast time ... and, what a surprise, it's raining! Cool, too, with temperatures only in the 50s. I walk across the street to the Starbucks and find myself in line behind someone who is ordering two of everything: a java chip Frappucino, a Mocha Latte Frappe, an iced Constantine coffee, and more nonsense like this. I want a black cup of coffee. When I hear the counter person say to the Frappe-Latte dude, "would you like a box for all this?" I'm gone. It's a short walk to "Seattle's Best" coffee house. Not quite the best, but it was fast ...Open up the Seattle Times to find a Seattle Storm ad that could provide bulletin board material. It's in the sports section, with a headline touting tonight's game: At 7 O'clock Tonight the Sun Will Go Down. Again. Hmmm. Unfortunately, the Sun were unable to make the headline writer eat the ad. Connecticut leads for 36 minutes, but the Storm catch them in the finish. There must be something about the Sun that brings out the best in Betty Lennox. The Finals MVP of last year had been slumping this year. But tonight she is unstoppable in the second half and finishes with 29 points. The crowd is a huge factor. They were the sixth man in the Finals last year and over 8,000 tonight are screaming their lungs out. The Storm outscore the Sun 95-86, ending the winning streak at eight. Then, after the game, the news that Mike Thibault coached under very difficult circumstances. Earlier in the day his mother, Patricia, passed away at the age of 78. Coach decided not to tell the team until afterward. The team, naturally, reacts emotionally and supportively.

Thursday, June 23

I had to take a detour from the team and head back to Connecticut on my own. My younger son Gary is graduating from Hamden High School on Thursday night. I have to fly about 6,000 miles in 24 hours, but it's well worth it. General manager Chris Sienko and I take the red-eye out of Seattle following the Storm game. Chris is returning home for the wedding of Sun business manager Dave Martinelli. Bleary-eyed, we arrive in Bradley about 10 a.m. I'll return to Bradley in about 18 hours and head back to the west coast.

Friday, June 24

Sacramento is teeming with history, but no time for discovery today. My flight out of Bradley leaves at 7 a.m. and arrives in California's capital city a little past noon west coast time. That leaves about four hours to finish preparing for tonight's broadcast ... Coach Thibault will be with the team tonight but plans to leave after the game to attend his mom¡¦s funeral - It's a showdown between two conference leaders, each with a record of 9 and 2. The largest crowd of the road trip, over 10,000 at Arco Arena, adds to the atmosphere. Sacramento has a three-point lead at the half, only the second time this season Connecticut has trailed at intermission. When the Monarchs extend the lead to 11 four minutes into the second half, it doesn't look good. What happens next may be remembered as one of the defining points in this season. Taj McWilliams Franklin would later explain to our radio audience: "We felt we had to do something positive for Coach." What they did was rip off a 25-4 run, turning an 11-point deficit into an 10-point lead. The game is effectively over. The Sun win it 61-50. McWilliams Franklin: "Some people don't realize what a coach can mean to a player." Her actions spoke as loudly as her words. Her 14 rebounds, one short of a career-high, speak to the intensity she and the Sun played with in the second half.

Saturday, June 25

The euphoria of a road victory over a quality opponent quickly gives way to reality. The team shuffles onto the bus under the cover of darkness. It's 4:30 a.m., and the team has a 6 a.m. flight to Phoenix. The traveling party is minus three: Coach Thibault, Tracy Roessner and Katie Douglas. Coach is headed to his mother's funeral, and Katie has come down with a bad bout of the flu. Tracy, the team's video coordinator, will stay behind in Sacramento with Katie.- Typical Phoenix weather for this time of year: temperatures soar above 100 degrees on a daily basis. The local newspapers report the big story: wildfires rage in the surrounding area. I head to the air-conditioned hotel room. New England is much more my speed - Tonight's game will be a supreme test: the head coach absent, the team's starting shooting guard absent, the team working on little rest facing a team desperate for a win- Bernadette Mattox will serve as head coach with Scott Hawk assisting. As Bernadette tells our radio audience before the game: "Everything is in place for the players to succeed. We pointed to this game when the schedule came out, knowing that getting past the mental hurdle (of playing back to back road games) would be tougher than the physical hurdle." Bernadette is no stranger to the bench. She was an assistant to Rick Pitino at Kentucky in the 1990s - the first female assistant coach in men's Division I history ... and was the head coach of the Kentucky women¡¦s team for eight seasons. The game is sloppy in the first half. The team's go back-and-forth in the second half when two of the prize jewels of the 2004 draft kick it into gear. When the dust clears Diana Taurasi will have a season-high 28 .. in a loss. Lindsay Whalen will have a career-high 20 points .. in a 77-69 Sun win. Add Nykesha Sale's 14-point burst over the final five minutes of the game ... as she played with five fouls -- and the Sun have produced another defining win. Bernadette and Hawk are beaming as they leave the floor. An all-day flight tomorrow back home just got easier.