UNCASVILLE, Conn. – Robert Douglas and his mother Stephanie didn’t really like basketball before David, Robert’s father, got a job working at Mohegan Sun Arena a few years ago. The job came with free tickets so the Douglas family started going to games.
They fell in love with the Sun, becoming season ticket holders and even planning summer vacations around home games. They developed routines. Robert, 10, and Stephanie arrive early to get dinner and avoid parking problems. Their seats are in Section 18, where they’ve made friends since buying season tickets. Robert even became pals with a lot of the arena staff, which is how he ended up handing out dozens of commemorative tickets to fans throughout the game.
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So you can only imagine how he felt when he heard that the Sun were going to be relocating after the 2026 season to Houston.
“My reaction was ‘I hate Texas,'” Robert recalled Thursday.
“You can’t say that,” Stephanie replied laughing.
“Yes, I can,” Robert responded.
But Stephanie admitted that when she learned the news of the move, she too was mad, frustrated and sad. The anger had subsided by Thursday, Stephanie said, but she was still sad about her family’s favorite team moving away.
Oilers fans know those feelings very well, and relive part of it during every debate over the past three decades about Luv Ya Blue and who gets to wear the color.
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“Even though they may not know you personally, it’s like they become part of your family too,” Stephanie said.
Those emotions made Thursday almost like a final family reunion for the Sun faithful, which ended on a high note as the Sun’s “Sunset Season” finally descended below the horizon with a 95-81 final victory over the Toronto Tempo.
Yet over the course of the day, the past, present and future of two teams collided like a comet with the sun.
“Everyone says you have to stay present,” said Sun general manager Morgan Tuck, who will be staying with the organization as it moves to Houston. “But it’s hard not to think about the future.”
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‘We played for pride’
Sun assistant coach Roneeka Hodges walked into Mohegan Sun Arena knowing Thursday wasn’t just any other gameday.
“This is going to go down in history,” Hodges said after Thursday morning’s shootaround. “The WNBA has tremendous history, and I think everybody who’s a part now and the new fans, they’ll be a part of this history and we’ll all remember it for years to come.”
The Connecticut Sun were the first professional sports team owned by a Native American tribe after the Mohegan Tribe purchased the Orlando Miracle and moved the team to Connecticut for the 2003 season.
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Located about 24 miles from Storrs, Conn., home of UConn’s campus, the Sun built their own fanbase that included Huskies fans and non-Huskies fans. Numerous All-Stars made their way through Uncasville over the years. Connecticut made the WNBA Finals in 2004 and 2005 and then again in 2019 and 2022. But the franchise never won the title.
Movement towards selling the team started in 2025. Tilman Fertitta purchased the Sun earlier this year for $300 million, despite the team receiving other offers for more money to keep the team in New England, to bring them to Houston and revive the Comets.
eThe Houston Comets were the league’s first, and best, dynasty. Houston won the league’s first four titles behind a star-packed team featuring Sheryl Swoopes, Tina Thompson and Cynthia Cooper, among others.
But after just over a decade after the inaugural WNBA season in 1997, the Comets folded in Dec. 2008. Former Rockets owner Les Alexander had sold the team to Hilton Koch in 2007. Koch handed the team over to the league the next year and when a new owner in Houston couldn’t be found, the Comets fell from the sky.
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Hodges remembers the day the team folded.
“I was in disbelief because I had never experienced anything like that before,” said Hodges, who played her first four seasons in the WNBA with Houston.
But the circumstances were totally different than what went down Thursday in Connecticut.
For one, Houston disbanded after the season ended. Plus Houston’s last game, a 90-81 victory over the Sacramento Monarchs on Sept. 15, 2008, wasn’t even played in Houston but in San Marcos due to Hurricane Ike. Hodges started and scored 14 points, second on the team that night behind Thompson, but she didn’t recall any memories fromthe game.
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“What the Houston Comets have done as a franchise, I think all of women’s basketball understands that legacy and importance of that,” Hodges said. “I think everybody who’s been a part of the WNBA and has been following it for the last 23 years, 24 years, knows the history of the Connecticut Sun.”
Unlike the Comets back in 2008, the Sun have known for the entire season this would be their last one in Connecticut. Once they fell out of playoff contention, which was expected for the team in Year 2 of a major rebuild, Thursday’s game crystallized as the last sunrise for the team.
The timeline gave everyone a chance to appreciate the final season. But it also put Houston in the back of people’s minds.
“You can’t not think about it,” rookie guard Charlisse Leger-Walker said. “It’s such a big thing on the horizon, and I definitely get excited thinking about it. But at the same time, consciously trying to make efforts to be intentional about staying present and finishing this out the right way.”
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Nobody was thinking about Houston during the game’s final minutes as Ashlon Jackson provided a memorable finish for the fans in attendance.
The Sun were up double-digits on the Tempo late in the game when Jackson hit a trio of 3-pointers from increasingly further behind the arc.
The firecrackers set off joyous cheers from the fans. The last one – a 29-foot jumper off a dribble handoff that swished through the net – left no doubt that the Sun would leave the floor for the last time as winners.
“We played for pride,” said Jackson, who is from the Beaumont area, “and we were victorious.”
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A final farewell
Jennifer Rizzotti is a 52-year-old former point guard turned president of the Connecticut Sun. She grew up in the Nutmeg State and then went to UConn, where she won the program’s first national championship 1995. She played with the New England Blizzard of the American Basketball League, a professional women’s basketball team in Connecticut before the Sun.
“I just want you all to know that no matter what happens from here, this team, as they move on to the next chapter of their careers, the success that all of them have in their future – you will always be a part of that.” Rizzotti said during a speech to the crowd after the game where she mostly succeeded at holding back tears.
“Always.”
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Emily Grynkiewicz is a 10-year-old point guard who watched Thursday’s final game from Section 121. She plays on a local travel basketball team and wants to play for UConn one day. She would have loved to play for the Connecticut Sun.
“I just don’t want to see them go to Texas,” she said.
But Grynkiewicz didn’t leave with tears in her eyes after her favorite team’s final game. She called it one of the top days of her young life.
She arrived early and stood above one of the tunnels with a special lamented ticket waiting for players to sign it. Then her mother treated her to a surprise, standing on the court during player introductions. Rayah Marshall handed her a keepsake basketball and she got high fives from her heroes. And, of course, her team won.
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Grynkiewicz doesn’t know if she will be a Comets fan next season. She’s not sure who she will root for going forward.
But that’s a decision for another day. Everyone still wants to enjoy this one a little longer.
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This article originally published at Before moving to Houston to become the Comets, the Connecticut Sun said goodbye with an emotional win.
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: Sports.yahoo.com
