The Connecticut Sun faced the Dallas Wings three times in the 2022 regular season and lost twice. Connecticut heads into the playoffs as the third seed, while Dallas enters the postseason as the sixth seed.
Sun head coach Curt Miller reflected on this season's regular season matchups against the Wings ahead of their first-round playoff series. Miller discussed the keys to success in a segment called Coach and Kayla on the Sun's Twitter.
"Each game took on a different persona. It was early in the year. There were some people out for both teams. But what we learned is Dallas is a team that can keep us off the glass," Miller said. "In the last game we played, between Alyssa Thomas, J.J. (Jonquel Jones) and Brionna Jones, we had one offensive rebound and we have the best offensive rebounding team in the league. It's a concern."
The Sun have to be better on the boards against the Wings, and Miller's mention of one offensive rebound throughout the entire final regular-season matchup emphasizes such.
"Rebounding is going to be a big key to this series. They can really rebound. We need to get on the glass, so that's a big thing," Miller continued. "And then, we need to have more activity. We didn't play and attack as early in transition as we needed to. We didn't finish the game when we had some momentum."
Aside from rebounding, the Sun need to quickly get out in transition and pick up some momentum in the process to keep the Wings down.
"We know how badly we want this, and my message is we just gotta be ourselves. We can't be someone different now that the playoffs started," Miller said. "We've got to share the ball. We've gotta have balance. We're best when we have lots of weapons out there and not just playing through one person and depending on one person. I'm excited with where we're at."
Miller wants the Sun to keep playing the way they've been playing, having closed out the regular season with a three-game win streak.
The Sun look to take home a win in the first game of the best-of-three series on Thursday at 8 p.m. ET at Mohegan Sun Arena.
