Mohegan - It is not entirely surprising the Connecticut Sun have struggled to date. Not with a new coach, new system, injuries to Renee Montgomery and Tan White and four of six games on the road.

Besides, the Sun have tried the dominate-the-regular-season thing before, only to fall victim to postseason heartbreak.

Trophies aren't won or lost in June in the WNBA, although the Sun, by their own admission, need to start winning. Today would be a good start against Seattle (5 p.m., CPTV Sports) at Mohegan Sun Arena.

"It's a hard situation," guard Kara Lawson said. "You don't want to fall behind too early because it's only a 34-game season and you don't want a huge hole to climb out of.

"But at the same time, we've played four road games out of six against some really good teams. That's not an excuse, but it's not easy to win on the road. The schedule comes back around. We've just got to keep improving."

The schedule comes around beginning today. The Sun (2-4) play their next four at home over the course of 16 days. That means plenty of practice time and rest time as they prepare to play Seattle, Atlanta (next Sunday) Phoenix (June 29) and Tulsa (July 2).

Seattle (1-4) is playing the season without Olympians Sue Bird and Lauren Jackson.

Connecticut coach Anne Donovan knows it's not fair to expect reigning WNBA MVP Tina Charles to continually duplicate the 30 points and 10 rebounds she contributed in Indiana last week. Sometimes, a 3-for-15 happens as it did Friday in New York.

"We're waiting on Tina to get going a lot of times," Donovan said. "We need to get aggressive and confident in other positions all the time. We need to play off of Tina when she's playing well or when she's not."

Charles said after Friday's loss in New York, "We're not where we want to be and not where we know we can be."

m.dimauro@theday.com