Sun rise

You’ve probably noticed the lack of posts on this blog in the preseason, and full disclosure, it’s going to be tough this summer, my life is different than it was at this time last year, and the whole moving to Houston thing has taken a bit of love away from our beloved Connecticut Sun. Hopefully as the season progresses and the regular season starts that will go away a little, but that remains to be seen, I guess. But - although I can’t promise you every game like last season - I’ll still be around and surely pop up at Mohegan Sun Arena at least a few times in the farewell season (don’t make me cry already). A new campaign began, though, Wednesday night in Canada of all places against the expansion Toronto Tempo, and the Sun looked a lot like a team that has never played together before, largely because they hadn’t. There is more room for optimism headed into 2026 than there was last season, despite the loss of Marina Mabrey (if you read this blog last year, you know I think losing he...

And that’s all, folks. The 2025 Connecticut Sun season ended not with a bang, but with a whimper followed by a small bang followed by a whimper, as they fell to red-hot Atlanta 85-70 Wednesday night at Mohegan Sun Arena. I’m sad it’s over, but obviously not nearly as sad as I’ve been in past seasons, which have usually ended sometime in October deep in the playoffs. Make no mistake, although it looked worse a month ago, the Sun were a bad basketball team this season, finishing with a record of 11-33 that the analytics say could have been worse without a little fortune. It also stinks that the Sun had to finish the season without what should be their MVP, rookie Leila Lacan, and her loss was felt deeply, although it was a long, long season for Lacan in France through the WNBA games. It also should be remembered that Olivia Nelson-Ododa has had the most win shares (trust the analytics) for the Sun all season long, and maybe the analytics are onto something because the team looked muc...

  End of the line. It comes with mixed emotions, this was an extremely trying season at times, especially when you’re used to long playoff runs every season. We were told what was coming, we saw the entire 2024 team depart for greener practice facilities and pastures, but until the team took the floor, it was hard to picture what losing so many games would look like. But it could have been worse, much worse, and looked like it was going to be one of the worst seasons in WNBA history when the Sun were 2-16 in mid-July and you could argue that both victories up to that point were a fluke. The Sun will get at least one more season at Mohegan Sun Arena, it appears However, then Leila Lacan’s arrival breathed some life into the operation, and fellow rookies Saniya Rivers and Aneesah Morrow also stepped up their games, first making the team watchable and then winning, like more than once. There was a moment there where the Sun was among the hottest teams in the WNBA, and that looked so u...

It took a while, but Monday’s game in Atlanta kind of ended how we thought it would, an 87-64 Dream blowout, although it was much closer at halftime and for most of the third quarter. But there was never a point in the game where I was supremely confident Connecticut was going to win this contest, even as Saniya Rivers looked as confident as she ever has on the offensive end in the first half. We’ve seen this movie too many times, at least on this occasion the Sun had some excuses, playing without Leila Lacan and Olivia Nelson-Ododa (as well as Bria Hartley), and it was encouraging to see some fight in the first half, even if the fact they were in the game seemed mostly due to Atlanta missing fairly easy shots more than anything the Sun did terribly well, although they get some credit for defensive intensity in the second quarter. The script, however, was eventually the same as we’ve seen in perhaps a dozen road games this season: Marina Mabrey missing shots and not helping the Sun on ...

We’ve reached the point of the season where everyone is looking to the playoffs, there are some seeds still to be set, but for teams out of the running, it’s time to begin to look around and see who is going and who is staying for 2026. Luckily, the Sun - despite some of the chaos far away from the court - should be one of the more stable teams compared to this year going forward. Unless there are dramatic changes in the new Collective Bargaining Agreement (and we hope there is one so there’s no delay to next season) and/or how players are protected for expansion, Connecticut’s young core of Aneesah Morrow, Saniya Rivers, Leila Lacan, Olivia Nelson-Ododa, and Aaliyah Edwards should be intact. Who is with them will be an open question. And we’re pretty sure the 2026 season will take place at Mohegan Sun Arena as the saga of the sale and relocation of the franchise may take a back seat as the league tries to prevent disaster and pick up what should be sizable financial gain for everyone ...