The Sun is about to set on the WNBA in Connecticut. On Thursday, the Connecticut Sun will play their final game after 23 season in the state. After that, the franchise will relocate to Houston, where it’ll become the Comets.

Geno Auriemma has a unique perspective on the Sun. The dynasty he built at UConn turned the state into rabid women’s basketball fans. Without that, Connecticut never would’ve been considered for a WNBA team — especially one located in a remote corner of the state.

And yet the Sun, for better or for worse, weren’t an extension of the Huskies. While there was naturally some overlap in the fanbase, not every Sun fan was a UConn fan, and vice versa.

“It’s been great,” Auriemma said of the Sun’s run in Connecticut back in June. “It’s been great for them, it’s been great for our fans, it’s been great for the fan base that they developed. In the beginning, everybody thought, ‘Well, the UConn fans are going to be Sun fans.’ But the Sun have their own incredible following and it’s sad they’re going to miss that.”

Even if the Sun didn’t go out of their way to pick up former UConn players, it always had a few on its roster. The team drafted four Huskies: Ketia Swanier (first round, 12th overall in 2008), Tina Charles (first overall in 2009), Kelly Faris (first round, 11th overall in 2013) and Morgan Tuck (third overall, 2016).

14 others went on to play for the organization: Svetlana Abrosimova (2008), Aaliyah Edwards (2025-26), Bria Hartley (2022, 2025), Tiffany Hayes (2023), Moriah Jefferson (2024), Asjha Jones (2004-12), Rebecca Lobo (2003), Renee Montgomery (2010-14), Jessica Moore (2011-12), Kaleena Mosqueda-Lewis (2020), Olivia Nelson-Ododa (2023-26), Nykesha Sales (2003-07), Barbara Turner (2008-09) and Tamika Williams (2008).

Sales will forever be the Sun’s all-time leading scorer, racking up 3,955 points (the Houston franchise will take the records and history from the previous iteration of the Comets). Charles won WNBA Rookie of the Year in 2010 and WNBA MVP in 2012 with the team. Off the court, Tuck took over as the general manager in the final two seasons while Jennifer Rizzotti served as the team president since 2021.

The Sun also led the way during some tough years for the WNBA. They arrived in 2003 when the Mohegan Tribe purchased and moved the Orlando Miracle to Uncasville. Over the next two decades, the Sun became the league’s model franchise. It was the first to turn a profit and frequent hosted the WNBA All-Star Game and WNBA Draft.

But in recent years, as the league exploded in popularity and costs rose, the Sun fell behind. As other organizations unveiled state-of-the-art practice facilities and moved into NBA arenas, the Sun continued to use the Mohegan Tribal Center, a community gym where they weren’t even the primary tenants. Ahead of the playoffs in 2024, they had to finish practice on half the court to accommodate a two-year-old’s birthday party.

In May of 2025, the Sun began to explore a sale and initially agreed to a deal with a group that would relocate the team to Boston, but the WNBA ultimately quashed it. They eventually sold to the owners of the NBA’s Houston Rockets.

The Rockets aren’t the only NBA team to take notice of the WNBA’s rise. The three expansion teams set to join the league in the coming years — Cleveland, Detroit and Philadelphia — are all backed by those cities’ NBA owners, as are the recently-added Golden State Valkyries.

The league is entering a new era, which Auriemma understands.

“It's going back to what it was in the beginning, where the NBA has pretty much taken the lead on this,” he said. “What's bad for the Connecticut fans is there may be more money, more resources, more things that a place like Houston, with the connection to the Rockets, might be able to do for that franchise than we would be able to do here in Connecticut.”

Still, Connecticut is home to arguably the biggest women’s basketball fanbase in the country. It’s hard to imagine the state will be left without a team while cities that already failed in their first go-around with the WNBA — Cleveland, Detroit, Houston and Portland — all get another shot.

“It's sad that you know that in a place like this, there's no professional [women’s] basketball,” Auriemma said. “If somebody would have told you 15 years ago, ‘There's going to be pro [women’s] basketball and none of [the teams] are going to be in Connecticut or Tennessee, you would say, ‘That's not possible.’”

Instead, Connecticut will be left in the lurch between two larger markets — just as it is in every other major sport.

“I'm sure there'll be a team in Boston sooner rather than later,” Auriemma said. “We'll have to be like we are with the Celtics and the Knicks, and the Patriots and the Giants, and Yankees and Red Sox. That's kind of where we are.”

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