Bah! Appearently Sprites load at a default brushfx of +1 (full light) so I had to do it all manually:
sprite= CreateSprite() ; set your parent entity as needed brush = LoadBrush("filename.bmp") ; set your texture flags as needed BrushFX brush, 0 ; NO EFFECTS PaintEntity sprite, brush ; paint it FreeBrush brush ; clean up, delete the brush