Sun rise

  “Well that was disappointing,” was the comment from the woman in front of me walking out of Mohegan Sun Arena Thursday night, and I must say, I concur wholeheartedly. It was good crowd, better than I expected, honestly, and they saw a decent first quarter and then things just go off the rails again, fueled by some good shooting from Los Angeles, and also just some bizarre coaching moves and a clearly rusty and vulnerable Marina Mabrey. It all combines for a frustrating 101-86 loss, with the 101 obviously standing out, the fifth time the Sun have given up 100 or more this season. And I keeping going back and forth between Rachid Meziane should be doing a better job and he just doesn’t have any talent. I think Thursday leaned more toward being on Meziane, with nine days to prepare after the All-Star break, the Sun were absolutely dreadful defensively, and some of his rotations were bizarre, including leaving Leila Lacan on the bench when she was the only one that stopped Kelsey Plu...

It’s not necessarily a sure thing quite yet, but Tuesday brought the somewhat surprising news that it appears t he Connecticut Sun will have at least one last ride in 2026 playing at Mohegan Sun Arena. If you’ve followed along here, it’s a lot less surprising than it would have been a few months ago.  When the Mohegan Tribe announced it was looking to sell the team on the eve of the 2025 regular season in May, connecting the dots seemed pretty simple: a) the Sun’s facilities and market size were no longer compatible with the modern WNBA; b) Boston is the No. 7 market in the country (it will be the largest not to have an WNBA team once Philadelphia joins the fray) and is nearby; c) a seeming trial run in 2024 went tremendously with the Sun selling out a game against Los Angeles at TD Arena with 19,156 fans in attendance. But subsequently, it was come out that things are not so simple. That game (and the contest last week) were organized almost exclusively by the Sun, who were ju...

We are back, folks, refreshed, confident, well a little more confident at least after a week off. In case you selectively forgot, there wasn’t a whole lot to be positive about for much of the first half of the Connecticut Sun 2025 campaign, as the Sun seemed set for one of the worst seasons in WNBA history after unloading its entire roster, except for poor Marina Mabrey and Olivia Nelson-Ododa. They still might end up on the ignominious list of all-time not-greats in the history of the W with the 2011 Tulsa Shock and 1998 Washington Mystics, the Sun have a pretty daunting upcoming schedule and will be playing a lot of rookies, but there were signs of life before the All-Star break, namely a split of two close games with Seattle and taking Caitlin Clark and Indiana to the wire in Boston last week. Marina Mabrey practiced this week and might return Thursday after a month out. Even more promising, it was rookies Leila Lacan and Saniya Rivers leading the way with their energy and defense,...

For all the hype about the change of venue , it resulted in a pretty bizarre game Tuesday for the Sun, one that it seemed like they were in from start to finish. And the score seemed to indicate that as well. But, after an opening flurry for both teams, the atmosphere didn’t seem to match, and the broadcast certainly didn’t, seemingly treating it as if it were a 20-point game and the Fever's triumph was inevitable. Maybe they were right, Indiana eventually put the game away 85-77 without too much fanfare in the final minutes. Was it a case of the Fever just coasting a little with New York coming up Wednesday night in their final game before the All-Star break? Did they take the Sun lightly? I don’t think so, I think that’s a little disrespectful to the improvement Connecticut has made in its last few games, and the final boxscore shows if the Sun could have only hit a few shots, they would have won this game. Although maybe I was watching a different game than everyone else. As I s...

There will be a lot going on Tuesday night at TD Garden, between the game being a showcase for the possible future of the Connecticut Sun, Caitlin Clark coming to town, and the first meeting of Indiana and Connecticut since the shenanigans of June 17 that saw Jacy Sheldon, of all people, ejected, and every right-wing website abuzz at the savior, Sophie Cunningham (I still get alerts for such articles a month later, by the way). I will not be there, sadly, although prices have gone down significantly for the cheap seats (about $100 at the moment), I already committed to my summer job for the evening. If anything, the Sun seem slightly less likely to move to Boston in 2026 then they did when I wrote their obituary two months ago on the eve of the regular season. This article shows how much moving the team to Boston for one night involves, but reading between the lines, there seems to be a little reluctance for the Celtics (and Bruins) to share much, at least not yet. The Sun sold out...