The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Mosqueda-Lewis back in state with Sun
Last November, Kaleena Mosqueda-Lewis and Breanna Stewart — teammates in college, and for the past four seasons in the WNBA — returned to UConn. They attended a game together, trained together and even hung out at Geno Auriemma’s house together.
“We were together basically all winter,” Mosqueda-Lewis said. “We were living together, working out together from September to when I left in December to go play in Spain.”
Little did MosquedaLewis know she would find herself needing to return to Connecticut months later (although exactly when remains uncertain).
In February, MosquedaLewis was shipped to the Connecticut Sun for a 2021 second-round draft pick, ending her five-year stint with the Seattle Storm.
The 26-year-old averaged 5.5 points in 31 games (four starts) for the Storm last season, but was deemed expendable with Stewart and Sue Bird returning from injuries and Morgan Tuck, another former Husky, coming over in a separate trade with Connecticut. Essentially, Mosqueda-Lewis was the victim of a roster crunch.
“We had just traded for Morgan Tuck. I think maybe a day or two later, I got a call from our GM in Seattle saying that he wanted to talk to me,” MosquedaLewis recalled. “I was just like, ‘What happened?’ He told me that they were talking to Connecticut about a possible trade. Literally, probably within the next three days, is when everything happened.”
And just like that, Mosqueda-Lewis was headed back to a familiar place, back to the state where she
starred as a collegian. She won three straight national championships at UConn before Seattle drafted her third overall in 2015. She sank a program-record 398 3-pointers.
“It’s nice to go back to Connecticut, a place that was home for me for four years,” she said. “I think even more exciting is just … getting a fresh start in a place that’s familiar, a place that I’m comfortable with.”
The 5-foot-11 MosquedaLewis should give the Sun some of what they lost when Shekinna Stricklen left for Atlanta in free agency: a shooter who will help spread the floor and give All-Stars DeWanna Bonner and Jonquel Jones more room to work in the paint. Mosqueda-Lewis knocked down 34.1 percent of her attempts from beyond the arc last season, nearly matching her career mark.
Mosqueda-Lewis is also a proven winner, having captured a championship with Seattle in 2018. And we know what she did in Storrs.
“I thought it was a great opportunity for us to add a shooter off the bench, someone that really fits the style that we love to play,” said Sun head coach and general manager Curt Miller.
Added Mosqueda-Lewis: “I’m naturally a scorer. I
definitely know that I’m not the quickest, but I am a smart player and I know how to play my angles. I’m definitely going to be coming off the bench, but I think it’s just a matter of what I do with the minutes I get.”
Connecticut was scheduled to tip off its season Saturday against New York at home, but the coronavirus pandemic changed that. Right now, Mosqueda-Lewis doesn’t know when, or even if, she’ll be able to get on the court.
In the meantime, as she waits for some clarity from the league’s brain trust, Mosqueda-Lewis is staying with her parents in Orange County, California. She’s been training in their garage, cycling between running, weightlifting, boxing and jumping rope, but still doesn’t have access to a hoop. It’s difficult, of course.
“I’m hopeful, but I’m just as blind as everybody else, honestly,” Mosqueda-Lewis said about starting the season. “We don’t know what’s going to happen. I would like to think that we can pull something off and we can have a season, but I don’t know. With people extending their stay-at-home orders, and some places opening a little bit and getting big gatherings of people, I’m not sure what’s going to happen. I wish I did.”