Record: 8-16
Playoff Position: 11th (1 game out of the Playoffs)
Games Remaining: 10

PRECAPS: San Antonio Stars | Connecticut Sun | Dallas Wings | Washington Mystics | Seattle Storm | Phoenix Mercury | Chicago Sky | Indiana Fever | Atlanta Dream | New York Liberty | Minnesota Lynx

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Pre-Break Recap

Coming off a last place finish in the Eastern Conference last year, and entering the season with a new head coach and three first-round draft picks, the Connecticut Sun were not expected to be challenging for a spot in the playoffs. And that was before they traded last year’s Most Improved Player, Kelsey Bone, for Courtney Williams, giving them four of the top eight picks in the 2016 WNBA Draft.

Curt Miller, the team’s brand new head coach, wasn’t worried about expectations, however. He simply wanted to establish a foundation for the team’s rebuilding process. As he told WNBA.com before the season, “I’m not going to talk about championships, certainly not going to talk about how many games we need to win. I’m going to try establish a culture and the wins and losses take care of itself once you establish that culture.”

After the first 24 games this season, the wins and losses haven’t gone the Sun’s way, as they sit at 8-16, in 11th place out of 12 in the league. Yet somehow, that leaves them just one game out of playoff contention, right in the hunt once the season resumes in the last week of August.

More promising for the Sun is that they finished July with a 5-3 record, including an overtime win over the mighty Minnesota Lynx, and Chiney Ogwumike is on fire, finally looking like the player she was in 2014.

For the whole season, the Sun rank seventh in defensive rating (103.8) and 10th in offensive rating (99.3) for a net rating of -4.5. But during July, their defensive rating was just 100.6 and their offensive rating came out to 104.9, for a net rating of +4.6 — third-best in the league.

It was a rough beginning to the season, but the culture Miller put in place early on is starting to pay dividends, and that’s what Miller loves to see.

“It took a while, but we’re really excited about the second half of the season, being 5-3 in our last eight games, and those three losses we had late leads in all three of those games,” Miller told WNBA.com. “So we’re really excited about how we’re playing, but more importantly about the culture that seems to have started with this team.”

Pre-Break Highlight
Sun Take Down Defending Champs

On July 7, the Sun welcomed the Lynx to Mohegan Sun Arena, and despite 40 points from Maya Moore, the Sun sent the Lynx slinking away with a 93-89 overtime victory. Not many could believe the result, as the Sun became just one of four teams to defeat the Lynx this season, getting big-time performances from Alex Bentley (24 points) and Chiney Ogwumike (21 points, 7 rebounds) to help secure victory.

It was certainly the team’s most impressive victory thus far, and one that made Coach Miller quite proud, especially after the tough opening few months.

“It took us a while, but we got to that point in these last eight games that we’re starting to overachieve,” Miller said. “We’re beating teams that on paper might have more talent or more experience than us. … I guess the thing that makes me proud as a coach is getting teams to overachieve. And this stretch before the break, we started to do that.”

3 Standouts

Chiney Ogwumike

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After missing the whole 2015 season with a knee injury, Ogwumike had a slow start to the 2016 campaign, as detailed in this piece from earlier this month.

She came on strong in July, however, and once again looks like the player that won the Rookie of the Year award in 2014. Over the eight games the Sun played in the month, she averaged 16.4 points on 64-percent shooting, 8.8 rebounds, 2.0 blocks and 1.8 steals per game. It’s no coincidence that those numbers coincided with Connecticut’s best month of the season, as they went 5-3, jumping right into playoff contention.

Alex Bentley

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Bentley gets buckets. It’s what she’s done, it’s what she does, and it’s what she always will do. This year has been no different, as she leads the team with 13.8 points per game. In June, she tied a career-high as she dropped 31 points during the Sun’s triple-overtime loss to the Washington Mystics. A few days later, she poured in 29 to lead the Sun over the Stars, 93-90. Her ability to create her own shot is crucial on this Connecticut team, which can at times struggle to put the ball in the basket.

Jasmine Thomas

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Currently in her sixth year, Jasmine Thomas is one of the elder stateswomen on this Sun team, guiding the way both in the locker room and on the court, where she’s submitting the best season of her career.

Her 10.7 points, 4.9 assists, 4.5 rebounds, 1.4 steals, 38.9 percent shooting, and 33 minutes per game are all personal bests, as she’s on pace to set career highs in every single statistical category except three-point percentage.

The Sun will need her veteran presence more than ever after the Olympic break as they try to sneak into the playoffs.

Season in Photos

Click here to see the best photos of the Sun’s season so far

Post-Break Preview

One of the reasons it took a while for the Sun to get going is because their roster is incredibly young. The average age is 24.9 years old, and just three players, Aneika Henry-Morello (4), Jasmine Thomas (5) and Camille Little (9), have more than three years of experience.

There are numerous obstacles that come with having such a young roster, but as Miller relayed, “The biggest challenge — the hardest thing in this league while games are going — is limited practice time. So things that are hurting you, things that you want to add, things you want to improve on, there’s just no practice time.”

That’s why this Olympic break will be vital for the Sun, as they have plenty of time to hit the gym and get better.

As Coach Miller put it, “This break is really going to provide us a second training camp, per say, so we can go back to the basics, work on fundamentals, work on the pillars of what we think is important.”

Specifically, Miller wants the team to get better on the defensive end. “If we’re going to make a run towards the playoffs, it’s gonna be at the defensive end,” he said. “We’ve seen a huge improvement during that stretch of a 5-3 record. In order for us to make a run in these last 10 games, we’re going to have to really have a good run at the defensive end.”

They did get better in July, and they’ll have to keep that trend up if they want to make the postseason, a goal which has surprisingly become attainable for the Sun.

“That’s always been a goal; we’d love to make the playoffs,” said Miller. And who wouldn’t? But in classic Coach Miller fashion, he made it clear that simply making the playoffs this season was not the ultimate achievement.

“If you look at that end result and miss the journey to that point, you’re not going to accomplish it. So we’re still talking about the process, we’re still talking about our pillars of what we believe in and what we work on.”

That’s the culture Miller has built in Connecticut, and that’s the culture that will make them not only a challenger for the playoffs this season, but for years to come.