Blogs > Elm City to Eagleville

A blog on UConn women's basketball.

Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Sun are in the playoffs

After missing the playoffs for the last two years, the Connecticut Sun clinched a spot on Tuesday night.

It was far from an ideal way of getting into the playoffs as the Sun followed up a puzzling loss at Tulsa by losing 78-66 at San Antonio. But Chicago's loss to New York guaranteed Connecticut one of the four Eastern Conference playoff spots.

"This doesn’t feel real good," Connecticut Sun coach Mike Thibault said after the game. "You’d rather win to get in [the playoffs]. You don’t want to back in. We were going to get in eventually, but it’s not a fun way to have it happen. I’d rather walk off the court with a win and say we did something great tonight. We didn’t do much great tonight."

Veteran forward Asjha Jones, the only member of the 2008 Connecticut Sun team still with the squad, had a similar reaction.

"At least we’re in, right?" Jones said. "The last two years we haven’t gotten to the playoffs, so I guess that’s something to be thankful for tonight. We’re not too proud of our performance, but at least we’re in.”

Three years doesn't sound like a long time but just out of curiousity I looked at the Sun's 2008 statistics to see how much things have changes. Only six of the 14 players who suited up for the Sun in '08 are on active WNBA rosters (Jones, Minnesota guard Lindsay Whalen, Indiana guard Erin Phillips, Phoenix guard Ketia Swanier, Washington guard Kerri Gardin and Tulsa forward Amber Holt). Tamika Whitmore, Barbara Turner, Sandrine Gruda, Svetlana Abrosimova, Jamie Carey, Jolene Anderson, Tamika Raymond and Danielle Page were all members of the 2008 Sun squad who haven't played in the league this year.

Think about this year's squad as seven of the 11 players were college kids back in 2008. Renee Montgomery, Kalana Greene and Tina Charles were all teammates at UConn, Kelsey Griffin was enrolled at Nebraska, Danielle McCray was at Kansas, Allison Hightower and Jessica Breland were college students at LSU and North Carolina, Kara Lawson was a member of the Sacramento Monarchs, Tan White was with the Indiana Fever while Jessica Moore played for the Los Angeles Sparks.

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