{"id":408716,"date":"2026-01-15T12:19:06","date_gmt":"2026-01-15T12:19:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/408716\/"},"modified":"2026-01-15T12:19:06","modified_gmt":"2026-01-15T12:19:06","slug":"youngster-further-proves-undeniable-sun-truth-that-seemed-impossible-not-long-ago","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/408716\/","title":{"rendered":"Youngster further proves undeniable Sun truth that seemed impossible not long ago"},"content":{"rendered":"

Leila Lacan just played her best scoring game of the 2025-26 season. She put up 28 points on very efficient shooting, as she led Basket Landes to an 80-61 win over the Turkish powerhouse Fenerbahce.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Lacan scored over 20 points before this season, but never against such a high level of competition. Fenerbahce\u2019s roster is heavy with WNBA talent. Gabby Williams, Emma Meesseman, Julie Allemand, Kayla McBride, Iliana Rupert, Sevgi Uzun, and Teaira McCowan all played against Basket Landes. Lacan outplayed all of them.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Lacan\u2019s success against one of the top teams in the EuroLeague competition doesn\u2019t just underline her individual talent. It also highlights how bright the Connecticut Sun\u2019s future could be with a young core centered around Lacan (and perhaps a future lottery pick<\/a>)\u2014something that seemed impossible just before the 2025 WNBA season. When free-agency departures first forced the Sun into a rebuild, the team\u2019s future seemed bleak. That is not the case anymore.<\/p>\n

The Sun\u2019s roster may not feature a young talent with the star power of Paige Bueckers, Caitlin Clark, or Angel Reese yet, but Leila Lacan, Aaliyah Edwards, Aneesah Morrow, and Saniya Rivers are a very promising young group.<\/p>\n

The Sun\u2019s young core has been showing out this WNBA offseason<\/p>\n

Lacan\u2019s performance against Fenerbahce may have been her highest-scoring game of the season, but it was far from an outlier. She has been solid all season long, leading her team in scoring in the EuroLeague and the top French league.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Her young teammates are also doing their best to prepare for a new season with the Sun. Saniya Rivers and Aaliyah Edwards are both playing in Unrivaled. Edwards has been an offensive standout, as one of the most versatile bigs in the league and the Lunar Owls\u2019 most consistent scorer.<\/a> Rivers, on the other hand, is already putting on a show defensively, setting a new Unrivaled record for blocks in a game.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Aneesah Morrow will make her Athletes Unlimited debut in February. She will compete with and against WNBA talent like Ariel Atkins, Alysha Clark, Rebekah Gardner, Isabelle Harrison, Natasha Mack, Kia Nurse, Shey Peddy, and NaLyssa Smith.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Connecticut has two first-round picks in the 2026 draft<\/p>\n

None of the Sun\u2019s four young core players were top picks. Lacan went tenth in the 2024 WNBA Draft\u2014four spots after the Mystics drafted Edwards, who came to Connecticut in a mid-season trade. A year later, the Sun picked Morrow and Rivers seventh and eighth overall, respectively. They have been able to find young talent later in the first round.\u00a0<\/p>\n

GM Morgan Tuck will have to do that again in the 2026 WNBA Draft. The Sun may have finished with one of the worst records in the league, but their lottery pick went to the Chicago Sky as a result of the trade that sent Marina Mabrey to Connecticut.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Instead of picking in the lottery, the Sun own the twelfth and fifteenth overall pick.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Leila Lacan just played her best scoring game of the 2025-26 season. She put up 28 points on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":408717,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[99,434],"class_list":{"0":"post-408716","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wnba","8":"tag-sports","9":"tag-wnba"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408716","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=408716"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408716\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/408717"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=408716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=408716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=408716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}