August 15, 2024, 4:29 p.m. • Last updated: August 15, 2024, 4:29 p.m.
Mohegan – This is the role Ty Harris has trained for her entire career: starting point guard for the Connecticut Sun of the WNBA.
She spent four years at the University of South Carolina, learning from one of the best point guards of all time, head coach Dawn Staley. Before this season, she spent four years in the WNBA, three in Dallas and one in Connecticut, and was the understudy to then-point guard Natisha Hiedeman last year.
Harris has earned her starting position following Hiedeman’s transfer due to her confidence this season.
The Sun enter the second half of the season, which begins Friday at 9:30 p.m. in Dallas (ION), with an 18-6 record, putting them in second place in the league behind the New York Liberty.
And this despite the fact that the likeable Harris recorded career highs in minutes per game (30.5), points (11.0) and assists (3.2).
“Yes, I do,” Harris said this week when asked if she felt ready to be Connecticut’s starter at the beginning of the season.
“Honestly, I’ve wanted to be a starting point guard my whole life. Of course, I was a point guard under Dawn Staley for the last four years in college… she taught me a lot. And now I finally got the opportunity to show that I can be a starting point guard.”
Harris scored a season-high 23 points on 9-of-14 shooting in a win at Washington on June 27 and scored in double figures seven straight games from June 2-18, twice adding seven assists.
The 5-foot-10 Harris owes the confidence she needs to start the team to her past as a point guard—she won the Dawn Staley Award as the country’s best point guard in her senior year at South Carolina—but also to her offseason work.
After suffering an injury while playing overseas during the offseason two years ago, Harris did not venture overseas this year, instead spending time in Connecticut to get stronger.
She worked with conditioning coach Analisse Rios in the weight room to strengthen her legs and with player development coach Keith Porter on the court – “I just worked on changing the pace and staying consistent on my 3s,” Harris said.
She can also learn from another defender: Sun head coach Stephanie White, the former Wade Trophy winner who led Purdue to the national championship in 1999. Harris has known White since White coached at Vanderbilt while Harris played for South Carolina.
“I’ve stayed here with the coaches and improved and tried to develop my game the way coach Steph would want me to, and I’ve just been given the opportunity to do that,” Harris said.
“…It’s cool to have point guards as coaches because they understand what I’m going through. It’s a lot of work. It’s a lot of pressure being a point guard. Coaches ask a lot of you as a point guard; it might not even be your fault, but at the end of the day, you’re the point guard, so you have to take responsibility.”
White imposes a $5 penalty every time Harris doesn’t shoot when she’s free. She’s shooting 41.1%, 35.1% on three-pointers, the best on the team.
The Sun made some changes during the Olympic break, trading Moriah Jefferson and Rachel Banham to the Chicago Sky for Marina Mabrey, another scoring defender who averages 14.0 points, 4.9 rebounds and 4.5 assists.
The team has been working to add Mabrey to the team. Meanwhile, Olympic gold medalist Alyssa Thomas has returned, along with her Sun teammate and Thomas’s fiancée DeWanna Bonner, who accompanied her to Paris.
“It’s been great,” Harris said of Thomas and Bonner. “They have a legacy and they’re All-Stars. It’s just about putting it all together and keeping the confidence in what we’ve done.”
She believes that signing Mabrey will add more versatility to the backcourt.
“Ty Harris is a special defender, a special player, a special person,” said Staley of South Carolina in her senior year, when Harris was selected seventh overall by Dallas in the 2020 WNBA Draft. “She won a national championship as a freshman and worked harder than any player in the country over the next two years, honing her talent and quietly building one of the greatest careers in South Carolina history.”
Dallas is led by WNBA All-Star Arike Ogunbowale with 22.3 points, 4.8 rebounds and 5.2 assists per game.
The Sun continue their away tour in Atlanta on Sunday at 3 p.m. and then have a home game on Tuesday at TD Garden, home of the Boston Celtics.
