White sees bright future entering second season
UNCASVILLE — Stephanie White is the reigning WNBA Coach of the Year.
The Connecticut Sun’s second-year coach expects to be even better with a season here under her belt.
“The biggest thing is the level of comfort, understanding our team, understanding our players, and continuing to build on the foundation we put down a year ago,” White said Thursday. “Now we can take the next steps on what we want to do at both ends on the floor. But more than anything we have a level of understanding of what our players’ strengths and weaknesses are, how we can communicate with them and put them in positions to be successful. Communication is one of the most important things, I think. That will allow us to take our execution to another level.”
The Sun played their lone preseason game Thursday, falling to the New York Liberty 82-79 before an announced crowd of 5,617 at Mohegan Sun Arena.
Connecticut opens the regular season Tuesday when it hosts 2024 WNBA No. 1 draft pick Caitlin Clark and the Indiana Fever.
The Sun finished 27-13 a year ago in what many expected to be a rebuilding year after trades of former Most Valuable Player Jonquel Jones and point guard Jasmine Thomas to earn the No. 3 seed in the WNBA playoffs. They defeated the Minnesota Lynx in the best-of-three series but fell to the Liberty in four games in the best-offive semifinals. White, who replaced Curt Miller after Miller left for the Los Angeles Sparks, also had to deal with losing Brionna Jones to an Achilles’ injury during the season.
This offseason, Connecticut traded point guard Natisha Heideman to Minnesota and brought in former UConn point guard and four-time national champion Moriah Jefferson. Rachel Banham, the overall No. 4 pick in the 2016 draft by the Sun, returned in free agency. Of course, the Sun are led by veterans DeWanna Bonner and Alyssa Thomas, who was second to New York’s Breanna Stewart in the Most Valuable Player voting last year.
“Players are different. Every year is different,” White said “The biggest thing for us as a coaching staff is being open and continue to learn and grow and challenge ourselves to be better. We want to be transparent and clear in our communication and continue to challenge our players to take their game to another level.
“As someone who’s been in this game a long time, it’s hard to win a championship. It’s hard. I know some teams have made it look easy sometimes but it’s not. It takes a lot. It takes being consistent, being elite, staying injury free and being injury free at the right time. We’ve been close. Sometimes it’s a little bit of luck that gets you over the hump. Sometimes it’s one or two pieces. We’ve added some veteran pieces that hopefully get us over the hump.”
Bonner owns a championship during her time with Diana Taurasi and the Phoenix Mercury.
While White is more comfortable, Bonner, the one-time Auburn star says the players feel that way as well.
“For sure,” Bonner said. “We kind of got a baseline last year. We already knew the baseline and now we’ve added more to what we know and hit the ground running. They know us and we know them. It’s an easier transition.”
White played five seasons in the WNBA after leading Purdue to the 1999 national championship. She was an assistant coach when the Fever won the WNBA title in 2012 and served as Indiana’s coach in 2016 when it advanced to the WNBA Finals.
She was the coach at Vanderbilt for five years before returning to the professional ranks with the Sun.
“Stephanie is a great coach,” Bonner said. “She’s been around the game. She’s always learning and growing and bringing that back to us, stuff we’ve never seen or done before. She puts us in the right positions to score. She puts us in the best positions to be successful.”
While White would have liked to play a second exhibition before opening the regular season, she’ll take what she has from Thursday to help prepare her team for Tuesday’s opener.
“There are a lot of factors that go into that based on who’s available to play, there’s an international competition this year,” White said. “The Aces are playing Puerto Rico in South Carolina this year. As teams and organizations start to think outside the box in terms of exhibitions, there are leagues rules as well and that’s above my pay grade. We have only one this year and we’re going to make the most of it.”
Thursday, the Sun erased an eight-point deficit as Banham had five points in a 12-0 run to start the second quarter. New York answered with an 11-2 run to go up 43-40 at halftime and it extended its advantage to 65-59 after three quarters. With reserves on the floor for both teams, the Liberty scored nine unanswered points to lead by 15.
But Connecticut rallied to take a 79-78 lead with 1:14 left and had possession. But a steal and layup by former Colorado guard Jaylyn Sherrod, who went undrafted, put New York back in front with 36.4 seconds left. Sherrod added two free throws with 12.6 seconds to go for a threepoint lead and Banham’s final shot to tie was off the mark.
Banham had 20 points off the bench in her first game with Connecticut since 2019. Bonner added 16 points. Jones played 10 minutes in her return from injury and did not score, missing three shots. Jefferson did not play due to an ankle injury.
“We did some good things,” White said. “We had some good moments defensively. It took us a little while offensively, we didn’t start the ball game well. But we saw some lineups that can do some really good things. I always love when we share the basketball and 25 assists on 32 baskets is outstanding.
“Overall, for our first exhibition it was a decent showing. We got some good things out of it and some things that we have to clean up.”
Sabrina Ionescu had 15 points and Betnijah Laney-Hamilton 14 for New York, which was routed 101-53 in its preseason opener Tuesday by the Chicago Sky. The Liberty open the regular season at Washington Tuesday before traveling to Indianapolis for the Fever’s home opener May 16.