Sun bring some joy to Boston with victory over Los Angeles

BOSTON, Aug. 18, 2026 – The mood was jovial even before the Tuesday’s WNBA game between the Connecticut Sun and Los Angeles Sparks at TD Garden  – a celebration of women in sports and basketball.

Hundreds attended a pre-game festival outside the Garden and thousands saw the Sun snap a two-game losing streak and secure a victory for just the second time in the last eight games with an 85-77 victory over the Sparks.

Connecticut (9-25) played without Brittney Griner and Aaliyah Edwards for the second straight game but the Sun led from start to finish.

Olivia Nelson Ododa scored a team-high 18 points, pulled down a game-high 11 rebounds for Connecticut while Kennedy Burke scored 17 and hit 3-of-4 shots from three-point range. Saniya Rivers had 11 points off the bench while Leila Lacan had seven points and a game-high 10 assists.

Connecticut used an outstanding third period run to take over the game. The Sun led by six at halftime but opened the third quarter with an 10-0 run. In one sequence, Nelson-Ododa got a block on Nneka Ogwimike with Burke hitting a three-point shot for the Sun at the other end of the floor.

On Los Angeles’s next possession, Nelson-Ododa got a steal and that led to Diamond Miller (13 points) driving to the basket.

Burke had 13 of her 17 points in the third quarter. She was 5-of-7 from the field and a perfect 3-for-3 from three-point range.

“Obviously, I couldn’t buy a bucket in the first half but I just knew that if I got the ball in my hand, just to be aggressive and get to the basket,” she said. “I was just happy the ball went in.”

The Sun had 12 steals and three blocked shots. They outrebounded the Sparks (12-23) by a 33-29 margin.

“I feel like defense wins games and I feel today we did that consistently even though they came back and made some tough shots,” Nelson-Ododa said. “I thought our defense was good and it set the tone for us.”

Nelson Ododa also played well at the rim with her two highest offensive performances of the season. She had a career-high 21 points in Saturday’s loss to New York and added 18 — her second-highest scoring performance of the season — against the Sparks here in Boston.

Rae Burrell led the Sparks with 19 points while Ogumike had 18 points. Dearica Hamby had 15 for Los Angeles, who have lost five straight including three straight on the road.

The game wasn’t a sellout in the large TD Garden that seats more than 19,100 for basketball. The announced crowd was 16,378 but it was a vocal crowd that certainly had a good time cheering on the Sun, singing one of Boston’s favorite song – Neil Diamond’s Sweet Caroline – and watching the WNBA for the last time in the foreseeable future.

This was the third year that the Sun played in Boston. A year ago, they lost to Indiana in front of a sellout crowd and in 2024, the Sun beat the Sparks here.

Earlier this year, the team was sold to Tilman Fertitta, owner of the NBA’s Houston Rocket for a reported $300 million. That came after the WNBA poured cold water on bids of $325 million from a minority owner of the Celtics to bring the team to Boston and from a former owner of the Milwaukee Bucks that would have moved the team to Hartford.

The Sun will be playing in Houston next summer, rebranded as the Comets.

Fans just focused on the moment, on this sunny day and the opportunity to see the Sun.

“The reason (we came to Boston) was to expand our footprint, bring the WNBA to another market and make it more accessible to fans in New England,” Sun President Jennifer Rizzotti said before the game at the block party festival on Canal Street near the TD Garden. “We noticed we were getting a lot of individual ticket buyers from the Boston market so we wanted to bring our game to them. Our fans have enjoyed coming up here. Our team has enjoyed playing her and it was a no brainer to continue this.”

Still, there are just five Sun games left in New England.

“It’s hard,” Rizzotti said. “We appreciate the decades we have been able to play in New England. I know our fans are sad but at the same time, we’re trying to create a celebration of women’s basketball in Connecticut and across New England.”