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Dom Amore: For CT Sun and fans, the love affair was good to Ashlon Jackson’s last shot
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- Dom Amore: For CT Sun and fans, the love affair was good to Ashlon Jackson’s last shot
UNCASVILLE — The serendipity of sport always seem to hover over moments like this. When emotions are high and history of the strangest kind is in the making, who will be chosen by fate ?
Maybe the unlikeliest candidate on the floor on Thursday night was Ashlon Jackson, who'd already had her moment in 2026. But there she was with the ball, and the hot hand with time running out on Connecticut Sun history and the 8,911 staying put in the stands waiting for a reason to cheer through their tears.
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Jackson launched a 29-footer and sank it with 2:24 left, then hit again and again, scoring 10 points in a span of 94 seconds, more than she'd scored in any full game during her first season in the WNBA. With 50 seconds left, she hit one more running three from 29 feet out and, let the record show forever more, those are the last points in the 24-year history of the Connecticut Sun .
"I told myself I wasn't going to get emotional," Jackson said afterward. "Until you mentioned that."
Connecticut Sun fans sad, upset, as WNBA team plays last game at Mohegan Sun
When the Sun 's 95-81 victory over Toronto ended, the fans stayed in their seats as team president Jennifer Rizzotti, the Connecticut girl, took the mic and offered a teary farewell.
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"You've proven Connecticut deserves a WNBA franchise," Rizzotti said, though she will be relocating with this franchise to Houston. Jackson, meanwhile, jumped on teammate Olivia Nelson-Ododa 's back and the final game of the Sun's 11-33 final season was celebrated like a championship. Only confetti was missing.
"… Just being a part of something so beautiful, and so ugly at the same time, because growth is ugly, and it's beautiful," said Jackson, who finished with 18 points. "Seeing Jen cry, that's how it felt."
An hour later, fans were still lining up to get autographs, but in the fifth row behind the Sun bench, Diane Camacho, Joann Gallant and Pat Grondin, season ticket holders from day one, were still in their seats. "I can't leave yet," Camacho said. "I just want to take it all in. There's a lot of memories here, a lot of players over the years, and coaches, and good people. What hurts the most is there won't be a WNBA team in New England."
Camacho and Gallant, teachers from Dartmouth, Mass., went all in on the franchise in 2003, buying a lakeside cottage in Colchester to have a place to stay on game nights. They sold the cottage this week. Grondin, from Lebanon, Conn., had the next seat. To the end, they were emotionally invested, knowing all the players' stories.
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They knew Jackson, 22, a 6-foot guard from Duke, was drafted in the second round by Golden State in the second round last April, weeks after hitting a buzzer-beater to beat LSU in a Sweet 16 game, a 3-point shot that rattled and spun around the rim before dropping. Waived by the Valkyries, she signed a developmental contract with the Sun in May, playing sparingly off the bench.
"I'm so happy for her," Grondin said.
There may never be a satisfactory explanation for the WNBA's insistence on abandoning such a loyal, durable fanbase, but the fans didn't come to Mohegan Sun Arena one last time to ask why. They could have chosen anger or apathy, but most instead chose joy, came to experience and revel in the last moment and the players, many of them like Jackson, reserves all season, were up to it.
"We all came in with a lot of energy, knowing it's the last time we'd be lacing up, the last time wearing Connecticut across our chest," said Aaliyah Edwards , the former UConn star, who scored 16. "It's not just us on the roster today, it's all the people who came before us. We're just sealing the deal and ending this chapter. It's bigger than ourselves."
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When the Sun gathered for their final game, coach Rachid Meziane told them to "play with pride," and tried to set a joyful tone for a game that meant nothing except for the desire to give the fans something to remember them by. There wasn't a lot of anger expelled during this game, that NBA commissioner Adam Silver and the WNBA's Cathy Engelbert had succeeded in maneuvering this team to Texas was a done deal since March.
In fact, until the end, the fans treated it like a typical late-season Sun game from years past, when the franchise was a perennial playoff contender, cheering, chanting, getting after the refs at all the right moments. Most important, they showed up, as they nearly always have for the Sun, and stayed without bitterness to the bitter end.
"This fan base means so much to me," said Edwards, who needed several tissues at the podium. "Since my freshman year at UConn, and for them to commute all the way down here to Uncasville, it's just love. Everyone today and before today made history, pouring into the franchise when no one else would. Last time wearing Connecticut across our chest. … I didn't think the waterworks would hit me until I got to the locker room, but it snuck up on me."
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Kiki Rice scored 28 points and for a bit it looked like the Tempo would play the unwelcome guests at this going away party, but the Sun broke open a close game late in the third quarter to set the stage for Jackson, who comes from Sour Lake, Texas, 80 miles east of Houston. To add more to it, her coach at Duke, Kara Lawson , played for the Sun from 2010-13, and always reminded her "nothing would be easy." The Sun franchise "legends" honored throughout the season wrote this story, and a rookie was fate's choice to add the final punctation mark.
"This past year was kind of hard, coming from Duke and leaving their as a top player, and then … rookie year," Jackson said. "You're amongst some of the greatest people on earth, to just become a sponge, starting as a developmental player and working my way up. The last quarter, the last game, it was great. Why would we waste that (chance)?
"God blessed us with that, why would we waste it? This last game, we played for pride. … It's our last time, but we went out the way we wanted to."
