“I think your role changes night to night,” Sun center Tina Charles told reporters after the team’s recent loss to the Dallas Wings. “But just the sacrifice it’s going to take, that it’s not about yourself and what things may look like every single game, but it’s just the little things. And that’s why the Valkyries are successful. Because, they are players that on other teams, they’ve been the ones coming off the bench, having to bring the energy, having to keep the effort and everything up, and changing the pace of the game, changing the complexion of the game.
“So there’s selflessness, and that’s what makes a great team,” Charles continued. “So as people are shocked in the sense, because they [Golden State Valkyries] don’t have previous all-stars or all-team WNBA, but they’re selfless individuals, and they just care about winning, and that’s what matters in buying in, is just caring about winning.”
The last time Connecticut lost as many as seven games in a row was in August 2015. They have now surpassed that with nine straight losses, a franchise record. Additionally, when the Sun’s record reached 2-13, it was the worst through any 15-game stretch in franchise history, per Emily Adams of the Hartford Courant. Progress, so far, has been in short supply.
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Young and energetic talent
There are reasons for this, of course, along with cause for hope. The team is adjusting to a new head coach, figuring out how to integrate new teammates, and managing injuries, but that doesn’t mean they lack the hunger, or the potential, to win.
The 2025 WNBA draft also brought in energetic new talent, like forward Aneesah Morrow and guard Saniya Rivers. These rookies are the future for the franchise, but Morrow missed most of training camp with a right knee injury which set her back, and Rivers encountered an illness which caused her to miss a few games. They both seem to be struggling with consistency and finding their roles on the team.
But this young duo shows great sparks of success, with Morrow’s strong rebounding and Rivers’ pure athleticism. If they are able to find consistency and start to step up in crucial moments, they could unlock the win combination the Sun are searching for.
Sun guard Marina Mabrey sustained a left knee injury against the Dallas wings on June 20, and is expected to be unavailable for two to four weeks. Without Mabrey on the floor, it will be even more important for other players to take on larger roles.
Rebounding
The Sun have multiple players that have a strong ability on the boards. Charles, Morrow and Sun center Olivia Nelson-Ododa should be a core of inside players who can limit second opportunities for opponents. But Connecticut, so far, is last in the league in defensive rebounding percentage.
On June 25, during their game against the Las Vegas Aces, the Sun struggled to put the ball in the hoop missing their first 11 field goal attempts of the game, leading to the Aces’ 19-0 run.
Shots aren’t necessarily always going to fall but when possessions end with one shot and no Sun players boxing out or grabbing offensive rebounds, the ability to compete disappears. On June 25, the Sun finished the game with just seven total offensive rebounds.
If you look at the past nine games that they lost, their rebound total is usually significantly less than their opponent. Even in close games, it is a difference-maker: in a three-point loss to Dallas, the Wings outrebounded the Sun, 42-29.
“I just hope you just get tired of losing and you just become more competitive,” Charles said of her team. “And hopefully these losses as we’re heading to the airport tonight, hopefully, my message was clear and everybody’s thinking about what less they can do, what more they can do to build up the person next to them, to think less of themselves and what’s best for this possession.
“That’s just individual, that’s just character, just how you handle adversity so God willing, we can turn it around. And you know what? It may not look like a win versus [the] Valkyries or Vegas or Seattle, but it’s just how we’re losing. I can handle losses. I’ve had a bunch in my career, but it’s just how it’s happening and the effort that’s needed because to lose by three, that’s just making a choice to not play hard on defense or on offense, or taking it more personal, to just lose by three to a team that we match up well with, in my opinion.”
Charles’ critique of the Sun was echoed by her head coach.
“We lost too many battles, to give us a chance to bring a win, to win this game. We gave them 17 offensive rebounds. Like I said before the game, we were supposed to do a better job on our one-on-one defense. And we figured out we didn’t do this job to increase our chance to win,” Meziane told reporters.
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‘We have good flashes…’
Consistency has been a factor for the Sun and Meziane has emphasized the importance of this for his team. They have great runs and show spurts of success throughout the game but they are yet to play 40 minutes of consistent basketball.
They tend to get off to slow starts and then struggle to come back from deficits. Against the Golden State Valkyries on June 22, they started to come back too late making a 13-4 run in the fourth quarter to close the gap to 19 points but there was only 2:53 left in the game.
They also have quarters where they are playing strong defensively, getting stops and changing the pace of the game but then that seems to go away from quarter to quarter. Layups have been a huge problem this season for the Sun, missing easy layups in the paint and failing to finish.
“[One problem we had is our] consistency, how we handle certain situations during the game. But I think that it’s our problem since the beginning, because we were capable of fight[ing] against Minnesota, against Phoenix, and so we have good flashes on how good we can play but [we need to] find our consistency and whoever is on the court because we win and we lose together.”
“But we need to find this consistency and keep trusting in ourselves, trust in each other … I said to my team, ‘we are very resilient’, because it’s not easy what we are going through. So [we need to] keep fighting and work hard and increase our chance to win the next game. The season is long. I’m not going to tell you in September that the season is long, but now we have a lot of games in front of us to try to improve,” Meziane said.
The Sun are one of the younger teams in the league but so are the Valkyries. The Valkyries have only three double-digit losses all season, only one by more than 20 points. Eleven of the Sun losses are double-digit margins so far this season, eight by 20-plus points.
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Defensive rotations and communication
Meziane likes when the Sun play with consistent effort — it’s where they have found success in their two wins of the season, a diagnosis echoed by his players.
“But when our energy is good, I think we make each other better, and I think that’s when we like to play. We like to play with pace and transition like getting stops,” Jacy Sheldon told reporters.
But even when the team plays spirited ball, miscommunications on the defensive end with switching and getting over screens can throw the whole defensive possession off.
“[We made] some mistakes on defense. We overhelp on certain actions, so we give them some too easy shots. I think that for me [these are] easy fixes,” Meziane said postgame after their loss to the Phoenix Mercury on June 18. “I think that we overhelp. And on some, spread outs, we failed to make our close outs. And they took 12 offensive rebounds but how they took these offensive rebounds for me is a problem, because we didn’t fight [for the ball] when it was a 50/50 war. We need to do a better job in this area, finish the play, but Phoenix play[ed] a great game, they scored an important basket, and they deserve their win. But our beginning defensively, we were a little bit soft.”
Defensive energy fuels their offense
Turnovers leading to easy buckets are critical to a Sun turnaround in 2025. The Sun are last by more than two full points in transition points per game, per Synergy, but that is because only 8 percent of their offensive possessions come on the run. They are a respectable eighth in the WNBA in converting a fast break into points. They just need to do it more often.
“I think for us, when we get stops and get into transition, I think that’s what we like to do, and that’s what was working for us in the first half. So our key was just [to] try to continue to get stops and against a really good team like this, that’s a hard thing to do, and we had a couple stretches there where we were able to do that and get going in transition and make the extra pass and make really good passes. So I think that like I said, that’ll be our focus moving forward,” Sheldon told reporters.
Even before Mabrey got injured, the Sun were struggling at times to get her open enough to shoot and make threes. But Mabrey averages more than a point per possession in transition.
“I think trying to get her in space, trying to keep her moving, keep players moving, and just keep her confidence up,” Sun guard Lindsay Allen told reporters. “She knows that, with her and Tina, they’re going to get the majority of the shots, they’re going to be the focal point on offense … Set good screens for her. Keep talking to her about, what she may have, because teams are trapping her off ball screens and really trying to crowd the paint and crowd her vision. So just letting her know that she can get off of it, she’s gonna get it back. We just gotta keep her in space a little bit and share the ball as a team.”
In progress…
The Sun fell to the Seattle Storm for their first matchup of the season, but there were a lot of positives that game out of their performance despite the loss, according to the Sun players.
“I feel like it’s [on-court chemistry] growing,” Sun guard Bria Hartley told reporters after their loss to the Storm. “I think in spurts, people are building their confidence, especially our rookies in this league. I think even me, just my first season back in a few years, we’re working on building our confidence, so we want to keep building on that. We still need to come together and be better collectively, so that we’re all on the same page. I think you see moments where one player is playing really well another game, and other players [another game], we just needed to all be in the same game. So if we can get that to happen, I think we’ll be alright.”
The Sun shot better against Seattle than they have in most of their games. They shot 47.6% from the field and 53.8% from beyond the three-point line.
After showing some optimistic signs of future success for the Sun against the Storm, they then struggled greatly against the Minnesota Lynx, falling 102-63. Consistency, again, eluded Connecticut.
“We missed effort, we missed solidarity, we missed communication … Tough loss again,” Meziane said postgame. “We have to come back stronger mentally and physically because the highest level demands physicality … It was very hard to develop our offense and defensively, physically we were too soft. We have to learn from this kind of game when you are playing the highest team in the league. We have one week to prepare for our next game against Las Vegas, we played them three days ago so hopefully we can show some improvement against Las Vegas on Sunday.”
Morrow has pulled in a double-double the last two games, starting to build toward that consistency the Sun need from her. The Sun struggled with the same problems repeatedly during their road trip but now they have some time to get to work and fix some of the mistakes they continue to make.
And for all their youth, the Sun know the task is possible: the Valkyries have shown that already. The math is daunting, but there is plenty of season left.
“[We have to] just get back in the gym,” Sheldon said. “I think we proved that we can compete with the best teams in this league. And when we don’t show up, we obviously, like tonight, have to go back to the drawing board and get better and learn from it. Trying to eliminate those ups and downs and when it is going poorly for us, just trying to keep our composure and fight through those times. And I think as this team continues to play together, you’ll see that.”
