Curt Miller leaves Sun indefinitely

Takes temporary break due to a family matter

Connecticut Sun head coach Curt Miller has taken a temporary leave of absence and flown home to Pennsylvania to attend to a family matter.

Assistant coach Brandi Poole will serve as acting head coach during Miller's absence with Chris Koclanes assisting.

“It shouldn't be a great amount of time, but he did need to get home, at least for a little bit,” Poole said. “The tough part is just getting him back in (due to COVID-19) testing protocols, so that's still a little up in the air.”

Koclanes and Poole acted as co-coaches when Miller served a one-game suspension for a May 25 game at the Seattle Storm. Poole is in her fourth season as a Sun assistant and also held the same role when Miller was the head coach at Bowling Green (2001-12) and Indiana University (2012-14). Koclanes is in his third season as an assistant.

“I expect business as usual,” Poole said. “We talk about with the players when somebody gets injured. … everybody steps up and takes a little piece of that pie and whatever's missing. Same with our staff. We have an incredible staff. Chris is great running our defense. Awvee (Storey, director of player development) is great. Our video coordinator Peter (Feeney) is great. We all step up, right? Total team effort.

“Obviously nobody can replace (Miller). He's our leader but at the end of the day we're ultimately after the same goal — to be as good as we can. And we have such a veteran group that understands what we do, so they make our job so much easier.”

Connecticut (8-3) plays a twogame series at the Chicago Sky on Thursday and Saturday.