Sun looking to ‘finish the job,’ get back to Finals
In 2019, the Connecticut Sun reached the WNBA playoff finals for the first time since 2005.
And despite a franchiserecord 26 wins last season, and having the leaguewide MVP and Coach of the Year, the Sun have yet to return to the finals in the three years since.
This preseason, the team brought in a handful of new pieces and adjusted its lineup to attempt to solve the puzzle of getting back to the finals. The marathon sprint to the playoffs begins Saturday in Connecticut’s season opener at New York (6 p.m.).
“Our goal is to hang a banner in Mohegan,” guard Natisha Hiedeman said. “That’s been our No. 1 goal forever. That’s our only expectation. We’ve always been hearing, like, ‘Oh, we’re so close.’ And we don’t want this to be another season where, ‘Oh, we were so close.’ Like, we really want to finish the job all the way to the end.”
OFFSEASON MOVES
Connecticut ended this past season as the No. 1 overall seed in the playoffs but fell to eventual champion Chicago in the semifinals.
The only player the Sun lost during the offseason was Briann January. The point guard ended last season as an unrestricted free agent and signed with Seattle for her final year in the league.
With January gone, the Sun desperately needed more support in the backcourt. They brought in Courtney Williams.
Williams was the perfect fit for the team, since she’s familiar with its system and players after playing in Uncasville form 2016-20. However, the guard will be unavailable for the first two games of the season
due to receiving a suspension from the league in the fall after a video was released of her involved in a physical altercation in Atlanta.
“It feels good, it feels like that chemistry was never lost, just working out little baby kinks, but that’s nothing,” Williams said. “We’ve been playing together for three, four years and we all understand the game. We all understand the system, so getting that to mesh, I don’t think that’s going to be no problem for us.”
COMPETITIVE CAMP LEADS TO FINAL CUTS
Sun coach and general manager Curt Miller prides himself on creating a competitive training camp for his players. He wants to evaluate players at their best as they come in and work hard for their spots.
“I’m a big believer in creating as competitive a training camp as possible so the young pros, the young veterans, don’t get complacent and they earn their way onto our roster,” Miller said. “The big decisions for us this year through training camp and putting together our final roster was trying not to be prisoners of the moment, knowing the difficulties or the challenges that we’ll have out of the gate.”
The team finalized a training camp roster of 20 players, knowing that when camp started on April 17, a handful of its veterans would be late due to overseas commitments. The roster included two of its three draftees — firstround pick Nia Clouden and second-rounder Jordan Lewis (the Sun’s third pick, Kiara Smith, will not be playing this season due to a knee injury) — along with its five unprotected returns from last season and a handful of newcomers from the overseas and WNBA circuits.
Connecticut’s core — Alyssa Thomas, Jonquel Jones, Jasmine Thomas, DeWanna Bonner and Brionna Jones — along with Williams are the team’s only guaranteed players, leaving 14 players vying for five open roster spots over the course of the camp’s three weeks.
As veterans joined camp late from their overseas competition, early cuts were made to keep the team’s roster to the leaguemaximum 15 players allowed in camp. Connecticut made three cuts in the first week (Alexus Dye, Keyona Hayes and Delicia Washington) before waiving Lewis in week two.
On May 1, the Sun hosted their only preseason game, against Atlanta. While the end result — Connecticut won 94-78 — won’t count for or against either team, the game gave Miller a chance to see all his players in a live-game situation. With 10 players left vying for the team’s five open roster spots, every minute on the court was one to prove themselves.
And some did just that. Second-year veteran DiJonai Carrington led the Sun with 23 minutes, scoring 12 points and recording a team-high six rebounds and three steals. She was followed by Yvonne Anderson who, in her second training camp, played for 21 minutes, scored 11 points and recorded four rebounds and three assists.
Miller began final cuts 24 hours later, cutting Taja Cole, Aleksa Gulbe and third-year vet and former Sun player Kaila Charles.
On Wednesday, with a day left to the cut deadline, Miller cut the final two players: Stephanie Jones and Beatrice Mompremier. Both played for the Sun last season.
The Sun’s final roster was narrowed down to Alyssa Thomas, Jonquel Jones, Jasmine Thomas, Bonner, Brionna Jones, Williams, Carrington, Anderson, Clouden, Hiedeman and Joyner Holmes. Four total newcomers, including Anderson, who at 32 made her first WNBA roster after 10 years of playing overseas.
“Hats off to all the ladies,” Jonquel Jones said. “They came and they were ready to compete. That’s just the story of our league, just a lot of really good players and not a lot of roster spots.”
Connecticut will center its frontcourt around 2021 MVP Jonquel Jones and 2021 Most Improved Player Brionna Jones, while also having a fully healthy Alyssa Thomas for the first time since 2020. Thomas only played two of the team’s 32 games last season while recovering from a torn Achilles she suffered during the offseason overseas.
SHORT-HANDED TO START SEASON
The Sun will have nine players available for at least their first, and quite possibly their second, game of the season.
Per her suspension, Williams is not allowed in the building during the team’s first two regular games of the season. In addition, Miller still does not have a timeline on when Bonner will return from her overseas season in Turkey.
In their absences, Hiedeman and Anderson will likely step up to provide depth in the backcourt for Jasmine Thomas.
“Honestly, I’m just super super grateful,” Anderson said. “I’ve always just tried to stay ready for whatever opportunity came my way and for it to be at this time, obviously it’s a little later than expected, but just grateful and ready at the same time.”
The Sun open the season this weekend on the road but will play their first game at home at Mohegan Sun Arena on May 14 at 7 p.m. against Los Angeles. The Sparks feature former UConn players Katie Lou Samuelson and rookie Olivia Nelson-Ododa.
Starting on Saturday, the team will begin to learn whether its new pieces fit the mold and have what it takes to complete the puzzle and win the franchise’s first title come the playoffs in August.
“We have all the pieces and all the capabilities to win a championship, and we want to go ahead and finish it,” Jonquel Jones said. “Basically, this is the group that was there in 2019, and we feel like this is a group that can get there again and get over that hump.”