{"id":670705,"date":"2026-05-28T19:56:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-28T19:56:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/670705\/"},"modified":"2026-05-28T19:56:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-28T19:56:08","slug":"hailey-van-lith-waived-for-second-time-in-may-as-sun-part-ways-with-second-year-guard-after-just-9-games","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/670705\/","title":{"rendered":"Hailey Van Lith waived for second time in May as Sun part ways with second-year guard after just 9 games"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Connecticut Sun<\/a> announced Thursday<\/a> that they\u2019ve waived Hailey Van Lith<\/a>. The second-year guard averaged 8.1 points and 2.2 assists per contest in nine games with the Sun, who claimed her off waivers earlier this month<\/a> after the Chicago Sky moved on from the college star and Olympic 3×3 bronze medalist<\/a>.<\/p>\n

While the Sun parted ways with Van Lith, they activated Le\u00efla Lacan<\/a>. A French guard, Lacan was on a contract suspension due to overseas obligations, but now she\u2019s back from the 2026 La Boulang\u00e8re Wonderligue, where she won a title with Basket Landes and earned Finals MVP honors along the way.<\/p>\n

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Lacan is expected to make her season debut on Saturday against the Los Angeles Sparks<\/a>, according to ESPN\u2019s Alexa Philippou<\/a> and Kendra Andrews<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As for Van Lith, she\u2019s now been waived twice in May.<\/p>\n

The Sky drafted Van Lith 11th overall last year. She was coming off a stellar campaign at TCU. Before that, she played at LSU and Louisville.<\/p>\n

At Louisville in 2022-23, she averaged a career-high 19.7 points per game. When starring for TCU in 2024-25, Van Lith logged, at the time, the most points (680) and assists (204) a Horned Frogs women\u2019s basketball player had ever notched in one season, picking up Big 12 Player of the Year accolades and guiding the program to its first Elite Eight appearance.<\/p>\n

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Last season with the Sky, Van Lith reunited with LSU teammate Angel Reese<\/a>. Chicago traded Reese to the Atlanta Dream this offseason<\/a> as part of an overhaul that ultimately included saying goodbye to Van Lith, too. In other words, the Sky pivoted from a first-round pick from their 2024 draft class and a first-round pick from their 2025 draft class after finishing a meager 10-34 last year.<\/p>\n

The Sky\u2019s decision to waive Van Lith was based on the coaching staff\u2019s “style-of-play preference,\u201d Andrews reported on May 4<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Van Lith then joined a Connecticut team littered with youth. She got a chance to showcase her development. The 5-foot-9 Van Lith improved her numbers across the board after limited success as a rookie in Chicago, where she dealt with an ankle injury.<\/p>\n

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She shot an efficient 49.2% from the field, including 47.1% from deep. Granted the rebuilding Sun are 1-8, but Van Lith came into Thursday ranked second on the team in field goals (30) and tied for second in 3-pointers (eight) \u2014 and that\u2019s despite her starting only three of the nine games she played in.<\/p>\n

Van Lith averaged 17.6 minutes per outing and tallied nine-plus points each of her first five games with Connecticut. That said, she went scoreless in the Sun\u2019s lone victory this season, a May 20 win over the Seattle Storm<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Her brief stay in Connecticut is over, but, according to Philippou and Andrews<\/a>, Van Lith is grateful for the transparency and the opportunity the Sun offered her.<\/p>\n

Van Lith\u2019s hunt for a more permanent home in the W continues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Connecticut Sun announced Thursday that they\u2019ve waived Hailey Van Lith. The second-year guard averaged 8.1 points and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":670706,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[3691,3444,438,4384,18946,172708,27038,3029,4676,99,434],"class_list":["post-670705","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-angel-reese","tag-atlanta-dream","tag-chicago-sky","tag-connecticut-sun","tag-hailey-van-lith","tag-kendra-andrews","tag-leila-lacan","tag-los-angeles-sparks","tag-seattle-storm","tag-sports","tag-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/670705","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=670705"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/670705\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/670706"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=670705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=670705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=670705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}