The Connecticut Sun have spent the last seven seasons as one of the most consistent teams in the WNBA, reaching at least the second round of the playoffs every year.
But the franchise always finds itself on the outside looking in when it comes to the ultimate goal of a WNBA championship. The 2023 champion Las Vegas Aces and runner-up New York Liberty beat the Sun a combined nine times in 11 meetings last year, including a 3-1 series win for the Liberty in the semifinals. The Sun finished 27-13 in their first season under coach Stephanie White, and they are poised to compete at the top of the league again with little turnover entering 2024.
“The most exciting thing is just building off of a foundation that we laid last year,” White said. “We were at our basic level of execution on both ends of the floor. Everything was new, everything was an adjustment, so … continuing to challenge our group to take another step in a positive direction and be disruptive in our own way. As a staff we’re sitting here talking about all these things we can do with our personnel that are outside of the box and a little bit innovative, and continuing to just build of that first layer.”
Connecticut enters training camp with a full 18-player roster that will need to pare down to 12 by the time the team opens the season against the Indiana Fever on May 14 . As Caitlin Clark mania sweeps the nation, the Sun will have a chance to prove out of the gate whether the league’s veteran contenders still have an edge over the flashy class of young superstars making their WNBA debuts this season.
Stars Alyssa Thomas, DeWanna Bonner run it back
Entering her 11th season with the Sun, Alyssa Thomas just keeps getting better and better. The 6-2 forward had a historic 2023 season, finishing second in both MVP and Defensive Player of the Year voting while earning the first first-team All-WNBA honors of her career. Thomas averaged a career-best 15.5 points, 9.9 rebounds and 7.9 assists per game, and she set the league’s single-season record with six double-doubles. She became the first players in WNBA history to log more than 600 points, 300 rebounds and 300 assists in a single season, also making her the fastest player in league history to surpass 3,000 career points, 1,500 rebounds, 1,000 assists and 400 steals.
Returning alongside Thomas is fiancée and fellow star forward DeWanna Bonner , who had one of the best seasons of her career at age 36 last year. Bonner earned her fifth WNBA All-Star selection — her third in four years with the Sun — in 2023 after averaging 17.4 points and 5.6 rebounds, and she also ranked top 10 in the league in defensive win shares. Bonner signed with the Sun on a one-year deal for 2024 , but Thomas will join her as a free agent in 2025, so this may be the franchise’s last opportunity to capitalize on the veteran duo.
Thomas and Bonner alone weren’t enough to get Connecticut past division rival New York in the postseason, but the team gets back a potential game-changer in Brionna Jones in 2024. Jones was on a meteoric rise after she was named Most Improved Player in 2021 and Sixth Player of the Year in 2022, but she suffered a season-ending Achilles rupture on June 20. She was on pace for her best season as a pro, averaging a career-high 15.9 points plus 8.2 rebounds and 1.8 steals over her 13 starts in 2023.
Can rookie draftees make the roster?
The Sun selected four players in the 2024 WNBA Draft , but only two are expected to actually participate in this season’s training camp. Connecticut took French guard Leila Lacan with the No. 10 pick in the first round, and the 19 year old will remain overseas this year to compete with her national team in the Paris Olympic Games. Guard Abbey Hsu, the Sun’s third-round pick at No. 34, will also sit out this year’s camp as she completes her senior year at Columbia. Hsu was the first-ever WNBA Draft pick out of Columbia, though she would have been a long shot to make Connecticut’s final roster.
Part of the reason the Sun were willing to defer adding their first rounder for a year is because of how few spots are up for grabs. Four of five Week 1 starters from 2023 return plus seven of nine players that averaged at least 15 minutes per game. All of Connecticut’s free agency additions have at least five years of experience in the league, and three of the team’s training camp contract signees are former first-round picks.
Second-round selections Helena Pueyo from Arizona and Taiyanna Jackson from Kansas will contend primarily with the four players on training camp deals for two available roster spots. Pueyo fills a bigger need for the Sun as an elite defensive guard, and at 6-foot she has a bit more size than most of the team’s returners in the backcourt. She was a two-time Pac-12 All-Defensive selection at Arizona, and general manager Darius Taylor called her the “steal of the draft” at No. 22 overall.
Jackson had a breakout senior season for the Jayhawks averaging a double-double, and there’s no question the Sun could use her prowess as a rim protector, but it’s harder to find space of her in the lineup with 6-5 centers Astou Ndour-Fall and Olivia Nelson-Ododa already complementing the stars in the front court. Ododa is also a UConn standout and was impactful off the bench of the Sun last year averaging 4.5 points on 53.7% shooting in 15 minutes per game. Ndour-Fall won a WNBA title with the Chicago Sky in 2021 and joined Connecticut as a free agent this offseason.
Offseason signings include familiar faces
The Sun were active during free agency despite returning most of last season’s roster, trading Rebecca Allen to the Phoenix Mercury in exchange for point guard Moriah Jefferson and sending Natisha Hiedeman to the the Minnesota Lynx to add veteran guard Tiffany Mitchell . Both will make their Sun debuts at this year’s training camp, but playing in Uncasville is a sort of homecoming for Jefferson as a former UConn star. The seven-year WNBA veteran helped the Huskies to four consecutive national championships from 2012-16, and she reunites in Connecticut with former teammate Morgan Tuck, the Sun’s director of franchise development.
Jefferson was named to the WNBA All-Rookie team in 2016, but she missed at least 13 games in each of the following three seasons due to a string of major knee injuries. She played three years with the Dallas Wings from 2019-21 and one with the Minnesota Lynx before signing with Phoenix in 2023. With the Mercury, Jefferson had her most complete season since her rookie year, appearing in a career-high 39 games. She averaged more than 10 points per game for just the third time in the WNBA, also recording 3.6 assists, two rebounds and 1.1 steals per game.
Rachel Banham is also a familiar face for Sun fans after signing a two-year deal with the team as a free agent. Connecticut drafted the 5-10 guard No. 4 overall in the 2016 draft, though she averaged less than four points per game across four seasons before she was traded to the Minnesota Lynx in 2021. Banham averaged at least five points in each of her four years with the Lynx including a career-high 7.9 in 2022, and she shot 40.2% from 3-point range in 2023. Only Tyasha Harris shot above 40% for the Sun from outside last season, so Banham offers a different look now as a reliable, developed veteran.
Key dates for Connecticut Sun training camp
April 28: First day of training camp
May 9: Preseason game vs. New York Liberty, 7 p.m. at Mohegan Sun Arena
May 13: Final roster cuts due
May 14: Season opener vs. Indiana Fever, 7 p.m. at Mohegan Sun Arena
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