UNCASVILLE — In the first quarter of the the regular-season finale against the Chicago Sky on Thursday, Connecticut Sun guards DiJonai Carrington and Tyasha Harris seemed to be everywhere.
Harris scored the first points of the game for Connecticut on a pull-up jumper, then assisted Carrington for her first bucket to put the Sun in the lead. A few minutes later, Carrington made the assist on Harris’s first 3-pointer of the game. Harris went 4-for-4 for nine first-quarter points and she secured three of the team’s seven rebounds.
The Sun’s backcourt duo ended the regular season on a high note, powering the team to an 87-54 rout of Chicago at Mohegan Sun Arena. Carrington logged the second double-double of her career with 12 points and 12 rebounds, while Harris shot 6-for-9 to lead Connecticut with 15 points. The Sun clinched the No. 3 seed in the WNBA Playoffs with the win, and they host the No. 6 Indiana Fever for Game 1 of a best-of-3 series on Sunday (3 p.m., ABC).
“I think it’s been really good for us to have done it together, because we both feel like we earned this from last season,” Carrington said. “It’s just continuing to stay in each other’s ear, whether it’s an off shooting night or a great shooting night, just telling one another to keep shooting it. After practice every single day, it’s me and her getting shots up. We’ve seen each other put the work in, so now on the court, it’s like we just continue to build each other up regardless of the ebbs and flows of the game and of the season.”
Carrington and Harris came into the year with heavy expectations from the Connecticut staff. Both were first-time starters on a veteran-heavy roster with a rapidly closing window to chase the franchise’s first WNBA championship. The Sun have reached the postseason eight consecutive times — the longest active streak in the league — but have always come up just short of the ultimate goal. Connecticut’s All-Star Big Three of Alyssa Thomas, Brionna Jones and DeWanna Bonner will all be free agents after this season, so the 2024 postseason could be the Sun’s final run with the core that has defined its last decade.
Prior to 2024, Carrington and Harris had started a combined 14 games in the WNBA. Harris, who was drafted No. 7 overall in 2020 by the Dallas Wings, averaged 5.4 points in 17 minutes per game over the first three years of her career before she was traded to the Sun in 2023. She logged 5.8 points shooting 41.6% from the field in her first season in Connecticut, but her minutes have skyrocketed in 2024 to nearly 29 per game.
Even on a roster that features sharpshooter Marina Mabrey and one of the best passers the league has ever seen in Thomas, the point guard has carved out space for herself as an essential piece of the Sun’s rotation. She is averaging 10.5 points plus a career-high three assists and a steal, also shooting 42.5% from the field and 39.5% on 3-pointers.
Carrington, a 2021 second-round pick, began her breakthrough last year when she finished second in Sixth Player of the Year voting averaging 8.3 points in 17 minutes off the Sun bench, but the fourth-year guard is playing like a rising superstar in 2024. In 30 minutes per game, Carrington is averaging 12.7 points and five rebounds shooting above 40% from the field. She is also the top perimeter guard in Connecticut’s league-leading defense, ranking top 10 in the league in steal percentage and top 20 in both defensive rating and defensive win shares.
The Sun’s backcourt duo first bonded on the bench in 2023, anchoring the team’s second rotation behind veterans Tiffany Hayes and Natisha Heideman. They played nearly two-thirds of their minutes together last season, learning each other’s tendencies in ways that became invaluable once Connecticut brought in five new players for the 2024 season.
“It was just something where she’s the one and I’m the two, so you do a lot of things together, a lot of guard-to-guard action,” Carrington said. “So we just built that chemistry. We kind of know when we’re going to switch, who wants to be high, who wants to be low. She knows when I want to curl, I know when she wants to pop, just different things like that … We also always were talking to each other last year, because there were times where we were both in slumps and just building each other up and keeping one another’s heads in the game, so I think that’s really where it was rooted.”
Connecticut Sun roll past Chicago to clinch No. 3 seed; open WNBA playoffs vs. Indiana on Sunday
Their connection strengthened during the offseason, when both Harris and Carrington spent most of their time training in Connecticut rather than competing in overseas leagues like many of their Sun teammates. Carrington was grappling with a lingering foot injury that left her unable to run until weeks before training camp, and she has a long history of knee injuries dating back to her high school career. Harris also has “bothersome” knees, so both spent much of their offseason working with strength and conditioning coach Annalise Rios on preparing their bodies to handle a potential increased workload in 2024.
“Knees are always a big thing in basketball, so we did a lot of deceleration control, single-leg control, single-leg eccentric movements, and also loading up in compromised positions,” Rios said. “They’ve definitely put in the work, so seeing them have the year they they’re having is just a testament to the work that they put in and the importance of that offseason … Having them with each other in the offseason was really cool, because during the season I need to make sure they’re ready for the game, but in the offseason I could be like, “We’re doing this and this and this, and if you’re sore tomorrow, that’s great.”
Challenging each other is an essential part of the guards’ relationship: Carrington is unapologetically herself on and off the court, making her a fan favorite — and the Sun’s leader in technical fouls — while Harris brings a more even-keeled energy to balance to the duo. Carrington loves to bring out what she describes as the “beast mode” in Harris, and Rios said she saw them both benefit from the competitive energy that they fostered during the offseason. Even on Thursday, Harris joked that she has gotten more comfortable hunting her shot because her teammates “do not let me rest.”
“There’s definitely some good peer pressure, like Ty would pick up a 50-pound weight and Nai was like, ‘I’ll go to 55,’ and Ty’s like ‘F that, I’m gonna do 60,’ so it’s really cool to see them not only push each other but also support each other,” Rios said. “I feel like they really know each other and they know how to push each other — and sometimes, when to back off — and I think that has translated onto the court.”
