Fun in the Sun: Connecticut keeps on winning by staying loose
It’s gameday, and not just any gameday. In roughly eight hours, Game 2 of Connecticut’s semifinal series with Las Vegas will tip off.
Theresa Plaisance should be nervous, but she’s not. Or maybe, she just knows how to hide it. Either way, she’s prepared to crack a joke.
“All right, this is good,” she says to begin her post-shootaround media availability. “Make
sure you use it with your friends.”
It doesn’t take long to realize Plaisance is a free spirit. Whether it’s through her elaborate celebrations on the bench or knack for telling jokes, the veteran forward very much embodies the camaraderie of these Sun, who have navigated the complexity of this unprecedented season to make another deep playoff run.
“Everybody has their own way of going into a game,” Plaisance said. “With us, a lot of us like to stay pretty light and happy and dancing and loose. I’m the same way. I love to bring that kind of energy. I try to keep that energy throughout the entire game.”
Of course, personalities vary.
The fabric of the team, though, has remained a constant these last few years: winning.
“You can probably argue we’re the second-winningest team in the regular season — since 2017 I think we’ve won the second-most playoff games,” Miller said.
To be precise, Miller has nine playoff wins since 2017. Only Washington’s Mike Thibault, with 12, has more. But what Miller doesn’t have on his resume as a head coach is a WNBA championship, and that’s where the conversation around the Sun shifts heading into Tuesday’s decisive Game 5 against the topseeded Aces (7:30 p.m., ESPN).
The Sun nearly broke through last season, but fell apart with everything on the line against Washington. But Miller, sensing potential, doubled down in the offseason and restocked his roster with not just talented players, but winning players. He swung trades for DeWanna Bonner, Briann January and Kaleena Mosqueda-Lewis, each of whom had won a title.
This year didn’t begin how Miller expected. Twotime All-Star Jonquel Jones opted out. Both January, a 12-year veteran, and Natisha Hiedeman tested positive for COVID-19 and needed to wait to be cleared. What came next was an 0-5 start.
It was sometime around that point where Miller called the team together, and held a film study over dinner and drinks. He watched their chemistry blossom.
“We were able to have some open, honest conversations about how we were feeling individually as a team and on the court,” point guard Jasmine Thomas said. “Sometimes, especially in a season like now where you’re playing every other day, those conversations don’t happen as often, you don’t have that time to have days in between games to clean up stuff off the court just in a chemistry getting-to-know-yourteammate kind of way.”