Having been eliminated from the postseason hunt following an 82-75 loss to the Liberty on Saturday, the Sun (9-25) have little but pride to play for in their final month of games. Yet the crowd of 16,738, while smaller than in the two previous years they’ve played at the Garden, gave the team a rowdy sendoff as New England prepares its farewell..
What better way to bid the Hub adieu than with a wire-to-wire win, their most dominant performance ever at the Garden?
Olivia Nelson-Odoba led the way with a double-double of 18 points and 11 rebounds while Kennedy Burke had 17 points and Diamond Miller added 13. Lacan had 10 assists to go along with 7 points.
The Sun held a 27-20 lead after the first quarter and stretched their advantage to as many as 11 in the second thanks to a combined 24 first-half points from Nelson-Ododa (13) and Miller (11).
Saniyah Rivers (11 points) made the second of two free throws in the waning seconds of the first half to send the Sun into intermission with a 46-40 lead.
The Sun came out of the break even hotter, reeling off 10 unanswered points to surge to a 56-40 lead.
Miller’s layup on the break gave the Sun a 54-40 lead and forced the Sparks to call an early timeout. Nelson-Ododa came out of the break and added a layup to cap the 10-0 run that brought the TD Garden crowd to its feet.
Boston, MA – 8/18/26- Connecticut Olivia Nelson-Ododa capped a 10-0 run in the second half with a strong layup during the second half of Tuesday night’s 85-77 victory over the LA Sparks at TD Garden.Danielle Parhizkaran/Globe Staff
It took three minutes of uninterrupted Sun scoring before the Sparks got on the board in the second half, and the Sun ran away with it in the final minutes of the third quarter.
Although the Connecticut Sun was making its final WNBA appearance in Boston, local fans had plenty to cheer about after watching the Sun prevail over the LA Sparks.Danielle Parhizkaran/Globe Staff
The contest between the postseason-eliminated teams had an air of melancholy hanging over it, especially at the sunset of the Sun’s final season in New England.
The Sun have just four home games left on their schedule before the franchise relocates to Houston at the conclusion of this season, ending a run of more than two decades as New England’s WNBA entry.
“It’s hard,” Sun president Jennifer Rizzotti said before the game. “I think we really appreciate the decades that we’ve been able to play in New England, and I know our fans are sad.”
Last year around this time, it looked like Boston was on track to get its own WNBA team, and with that came hope for a stronger fan base that stretched across the region.
But the league quashed a potential sale of the Sun to former Celtics owner Steve Pagliuca that would have kept women’s basketball in the region, opting instead to sell to Tilman Fertitta, owner of the NBA’s Rockets, who plans to revive the four-time WNBA champion Comets brand.
The door is open for Boston to receive an expansion team in the 2030s, but as fans filed out of TD Garden, many bade their final farewell to this era of the WNBA in New England.
Emma Healy can be reached at emma.healy@globe.com or on X @ByEmmaHealy.
Comments are closed.