{"id":629734,"date":"2026-05-07T22:24:16","date_gmt":"2026-05-07T22:24:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/629734\/"},"modified":"2026-05-07T22:24:16","modified_gmt":"2026-05-07T22:24:16","slug":"connecticut-sun-react-to-uconn-great-tina-charles-retiring","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/629734\/","title":{"rendered":"Connecticut Sun react to UConn great Tina Charles retiring"},"content":{"rendered":"

UNCASVILLE \u2014 UConn women\u2019s basketball<\/a> legend Tina Charles<\/a> played her last WNBA game on Sept. 10, 2025 in the same place where her career began, wearing a Connecticut Sun<\/a> jersey on the court at Mohegan Sun Arena.<\/p>\n

No one knew at the time that the Sun\u2019s season-ending 88-72 loss to the Atlanta Dream would mark Charles\u2019 final moment as a professional basketball player. It came as a surprise to most of her former teammates when the future Hall of Famer officially announced her retirement<\/a> Tuesday after 15 years.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was shocked,\u201d Sun guard Saniya Rivers<\/a> said Wednesday. \u201cShe\u2019s done a lot for this game. I know I\u2019ve only been here the one time, one year, but she was my vet, so I\u2019m very blessed to have been able to share a jersey with her. She spoke a lot of words of wisdom into me, a lot of motivation, so I\u2019m just blessed to have called her my teammate.\u201d<\/p>\n

Charles was the first No. 1 draft pick in Sun history when she was selected out of UConn in 2010. She retires as the WNBA\u2019s all-time leader in rebounds (4,262), double-doubles (201) and made field goals (3,364), and she is second all-time in scoring (8,396 points) behind only fellow UConn great Diana Taurasi. Charles was the 2012 WNBA MVP, a nine-time All-WNBA selection, an eight-time All-Star and a three-time All-Defensive team member. She was also a three-time Olympic gold medalist and three-time World Cup gold medalist with Team USA from 2012-20.<\/p>\n

\u201c(Her legacy) is just excellence,\u201d Sun general manager Morgan Tuck<\/a> said. \u201cThere\u2019s only a handful of players that have been as successful as Tina, and the fact that she did it over 14, 15 years, that\u2019s hard to do. Most people don\u2019t make it that long, so I think any time someone\u2019s going to think of Tina Charles, no matter where she played whether that\u2019s college, pro, overseas, Olympics, you\u2019re going to think of excellence.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Team<\/p>\n

Cloe Poisson \/ Hartford Courant<\/p>\n

Team USA’s Angel McCoughtry, Tina Charles, Brittney Griner, Seimone Augustus and Diana Taurasi (l-r) high five after a drill during a Team USA practice at the MSG Training Center Saturday. Team USA will play Team Australia at Madison Square Garden in exhibition play on Sunday.<\/p>\n

Charles was a perennial All-Star with the Sun from 2010-13, then with the New York Liberty from 2014-19, but the latter part of her career was tumultuous. She was medically excused from the 2020 WNBA season held amid the COVID-19 pandemic due to extrinsic asthma, then returned to the league with the Washington Mystics in 2021. She played 16 games with the Phoenix Mercury in 2022 before agreeing to a contract divorce with the franchise and signing with the Seattle Storm for the final 18 games of the season. She went unsigned as a free agent in 2023, then returned to the league for a season with the Atlanta Dream in 2024.<\/p>\n

When Tuck, a fellow UConn alum, took over as the Sun\u2019s general manager entering the 2025 seasons, she jumped at the opportunity to bring Charles back to the franchise that drafted her. Tuck remembers watching in high school when Charles helped lead the Huskies to back-to-back undefeated NCAA titles in 2009 and \u201910, and she said the legendary center was part of the reason she committed to UConn in 2012.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe\u2019s literally done everything that any basketball player could dream of doing,\u201d Tuck said. \u201cI think she retired at a time where it\u2019s like, watching her play, you didn\u2019t think that she needed to retire, so I\u2019m glad she got to go out on her own terms and be celebrated in a way that shows she\u2019s one of the best to ever touch a basketball. I think it\u2019s really cool that we got a chance to have her start and end her career in Connecticut.\u201d<\/p>\n

Connecticut center Brittney Griner<\/a> never got to share the court with Charles in the WNBA, but the UConn legend was one of her first veteran leaders when she began competing on the USA Basketball senior national team. Griner won a gold medal alongside Charles in her debut at the 2014 FIBA World Cup, and they also brought home gold together from the 2016 and 2020 Olympic Games as well as the 2018 World Cup.<\/p>\n

While she\u2019s sad to see Charles\u2019 career end, Griner said she won\u2019t miss trying to guard the future Hall of Famer\u2019s signature move in the post.<\/p>\n

\u201cTina\u2019s a special person, always competed hard. I can hear her yelling right now, doing that hook shot and the ref giving her that call, and I\u2019m just like, \u2018What?! How?’\u201d Griner reminisced with a grin Wednesday. \u201cI know whatever she does after basketball, I know it\u2019s going to be good and she\u2019s going to do it to the fullest, because that\u2019s what she did with her career.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"SunSun veteran Tina Charles, right, tries to settle Aneesah Morrow after the rookie took a hard foul from the Mercury’s Satou Sabally during Connectoicut’s 87-84 win over Phoenix on Saturday at Mohegan Sun Arena. (Sean D. Elliot\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Charles may not be on the court anymore, but her impact is still felt on the Sun\u2019s current roster. Forward Aneesah Morrow<\/a> said Charles constantly reminded during her rookie season her to slow down her game and play at her own pace, and that advice sticks with her as she enters her second year in the WNBA.<\/p>\n

\u201cI felt like the speed of the game, I was trying to catch up to it majority of the time, because the league does move a lot faster,\u201d Morrow said. \u201cShe always told me, if you take one dribble or one drive, you can get past any opponent. You\u2019ll see that in a few of my games I\u2019ve done that already, just taking my time, reading the defender and getting to the spots I want to get to.\u201d<\/p>\n

Former UConn standout Aaliyah Edwards<\/a> trained with Charles several times when the veteran returned to visit Storrs during Edwards\u2019 college career, and Edwards finally got to share the court with Charles as a teammate in 2025 after she was traded from the Washington Mystics to the Sun midseason. Edwards said the Huskies great was like an older sister to her, and she\u2019ll always remember the joy that the Charles brought to the practice gym and the locker room.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I first saw the news, it was kind of sad knowing that last season was my last season playing with her, playing against her or playing alongside her,\u201d Edwards said. \u201cIt just meant the world to me. She\u2019s such a bright light. She always made me laugh, always made me happy, but also on the court, she pushed me to challenge myself and pushed me to continue to be a great player and not settle for being average. So shoutout to Tina \u2014 I love you Tina!\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"UNCASVILLE \u2014 UConn women\u2019s basketball legend Tina Charles played her last WNBA game on Sept. 10, 2025 in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":629735,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[53534,27040,5550,2000,4384,15861,15862,983,168221,63868,27037,27041,99,27042,31478,31477,434],"class_list":["post-629734","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-aaliyah-edwards","tag-aneesah-morrow","tag-brittney-griner","tag-connecticut","tag-connecticut-sun","tag-ct-news","tag-hartford-courant","tag-local-news","tag-max-image-preview","tag-mohegan-sun","tag-morgan-tuck","tag-saniya-rivers","tag-sports","tag-tina-charles","tag-uconn-huskies","tag-uconn-womens-basketball","tag-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629734","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=629734"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629734\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/629735"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=629734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=629734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=629734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}