DeWanna Bonner, Connecticut Sun put WNBA on notice after dominant win against one of the league’s best

Midway through the third quarter on Thursday night, Las Vegas Aces head coach Becky Hammon pulled every single one of her starters and subbed in a rotation of entirely bench players.

Led by DeWanna Bonner, the Connecticut Sun held a 17-point lead at Mohegan Sun Arena, completely dominating the same team who beaten them to claim the WNBA Championship in the same building nine months prior.

“I just told them (my starters), ‘I’m not gonna watch that kind of basketball,’” Hammon said of the decision postgame. “I was gonna sit them out the rest of the game. Actually they came back and begged me to put them back in, so I did. We made a little run there, a little push, but at the end of the day we didn’t have anybody to guard Bonner. … She came out and kicked our ass, pretty much single handedly.”

Bonner didn’t even notice that the Aces starters were no longer on the court; she was simply too locked in. The 35-year-old wing was going off for a career-best 41 point performance, setting a franchise scoring record as she led the Sun to a dominant 94-77 victory. It was the first loss of the season for Las Vegas (7-1), which had opened the season 7-0, including a 90-84 win over Connecticut on Tuesday night.

The Sun were 6-1 through the first seven games of the season, but head coach Stephanie White knew this week, with two games against the Aces, who had beaten Connecticut in the finals a season ago, would be a true measuring stick.

After losing former MVP Jonquel Jones as well as veteran point guard Jasmine Thomas and bringing in a new head coach and a handful a new pieces, the Sun were discounted by many around the league over the offseason. While ‘super teams’ formed in Las Vegas and New York, there were more questions around whether Connecticut could still contend for a title. And those remained after the first half on Tuesday.

But on Thursday night, the Sun (7-2) put the league on notice and sent a clear message of belonging in that conversation. Now the team will look to build on that momentum as it enters two games against the Atlanta Dream (2-4) this week, on the road Sunday and at home Thursday.

“I think it’s a great start for us to start to feel like things are coming together,” White said. “To be able to beat an opponent like Las Vegas and to be able to respond I think the way that they responded, I’m just incredibly proud of them.”

On Tuesday night, Connecticut came out flat with a slow start burdened by turnovers, bad shooting and a lackluster defensive effort. The Sun trailed 48-31 at halftime; they had turned the ball over 12 times, allowed 15 fast break points, only shot 31.3% from the field while allowing the Aces to shoot 50% and been outscored 28-12 in the paint.

But thanks to a scorching performance from deep from Rebecca Allen off the bench, Connecticut turned a once 19-point deficit into a two-point game late. The Sun would end up coming up just short in the loss, but showed a lot of fight in the second half. They carried that, along with a renewed team chemistry this season, into Thursday’s game.

“That locker room is probably one of the closest teams that I’ve been on in a very long time,” Bonner said. “We lost that game to Vegas and it was just like nothing ever happened. We kind of were just like, ‘Okay, let’s regroup.’ We still have fun. Usually it’s not like that, you lose a game, you’re pouty.”

The Sun completely flipped the script, coming out as the aggressor and taking control of the game from the opening tip.

“We definitely came out flat last game, and we knew it,” Alyssa Thomas said. “We took a lot of energy to bring ourselves back in the game last time and we weren’t gonna let that happen. It was a different ballgame the second half  last game and today we wanted to set the tone, and that’s what we did.”

Bonner, who had been held to five points and sat on the bench to end the game on Tuesday, was hot from the start this time around. She scored the first bucket of the game and went on a personal 10-0 run in the opening frame with back-to-back triples to give Connecticut a double-digit lead. She had 17 points in the first quarter alone, at the end of which the Sun were already up 26-15.

The 6-foot-4 wing said one of her twin daughters, Cali, came up to her before she left for the game and gave her “some superpowers” to power her performance. And it certainly looked as if Bonner was a superhero as she drained shot after shot on Thursday night with the points continuing to rack up.

“Man, I worked so hard for this one,” Bonner said. “I don’t think anybody outside that locker room knows how hard it’s been these first couple of games. … I just wanted to be aggressive. I feel like the first game I probably had the worst game of my career. And yeah, I took it pretty hard, so I watched video. .. I was ready this game.”

Bonner broke the franchise record, previously set at 35 and held by Shannon Johnson from the 2002 season, a year before the Orlando Miracle relocated to Uncasville and became the Sun, in the fourth quarter.

Shortly after that she crossed the midcourt logo and drained a long 3-pointer to eclipse her career-high, set at 38 in triple overtime with the Phoenix Mercury in 2016. White threw her hands up with a wide grin, Thomas bounced up and down in excitement on the bench and the rest of Mohegan Sun Arena erupted in cheers.

“Super proud of her,” Thomas, who is also Bonner’s girlfriend, said. “She took the last game kind of hard. She holds herself  to a high standard. So for her not to hesitate and just let it go. I mean, I think everyone in that locker room is super proud of her . We know what she’s all about, we know what she’s capable of and I think she reminded the league of what type of player she is.”

As a team, the Sun shot 52.9% from the field and 57.1% from deep, with 28 assists on 37 made field goals. Connecticut also had 17 fast break points and scored 21 points off of 18 Las Vegas turnovers. It was the embodiment of the fast paced offense White envisioned when she took over the team.

“I feel good about how we’re continuing to grow on both ends of the floor,” White said. “We’re getting better. We still have have a ways to go to peak, which nobody wants to be peaking right now. But we’re not satisfied. We know that every day we’ve got to go out and earn it. Every possession we have to go out and earn it. This is a group who not only accepts that, but embraces that.

“Certainly this was this was a big one I think mentally for us just to come out and to be able to execute the way that we did and come away with a win, but this isn’t the end game. This isn’t the end game. We’ll enjoy this and then we’ll turn the page and we’ll get ready for Atlanta.”

The Sun and Dream tip-off Sunday at 4 p.m. on NBC Sports Boston.