The Atlanta Dream vs Connecticut Sun matchup Thursday night was over long before the horn. Rhyne Howard scored 29 with five 3-pointers, Allisha Gray matched her with 29 of her own, and Atlanta eased to a 104-69 win. Thirty-five points. In a league where a 12-point loss feels like a bad night, that is a different category of evening entirely.
Two teammates hanging 29 apiece is the kind of stat line that usually means one of two things: somebody got hot, or nobody guarded anybody. Howard's five triples suggest the first. The final margin suggests both.
What happened in the Dream's 104-69 win over the Sun
Atlanta got 58 points from two players in a game that produced 104. That is well over half the offense from the backcourt, and it came against a Connecticut team that has spent this season trying to find any version of itself that holds up for forty minutes.
| Line | Number |
|---|---|
| Rhyne Howard, points | 29 |
| Rhyne Howard, 3-pointers | 5 |
| Allisha Gray, points | 29 |
| Final score | Atlanta 104, Connecticut 69 |
Howard was the first overall pick in 2022 and has been the Dream's shot creator ever since. Gray has been the steadying one, the veteran who arrived in Atlanta and immediately made the whole operation look more serious. When both of them are cooking on the same night, the Dream do not need much help. Thursday, they did not get much resistance either.
Where the Connecticut Sun season stands
Connecticut sits at 8-24, and 2-12 inside the Eastern Conference. That second number is the one that stings. This is a franchise that was in the WNBA Finals in 2019 and again in 2022, a place that used to be an absolute chore for visiting teams. Mohegan Sun Arena was one of the genuinely hard road trips in the league for the better part of a decade.
checked the almanac: from 2017 through the 2024 season, the Sun made the playoffs every single year. that run is what makes a night like this land the way it does.
Roster turnover is not a scandal. Every franchise eventually pays the bill for continuity, and Connecticut's came due all at once. But 2-12 in your own conference means you are not just losing, you are losing to the teams you see most often, and those are the losses that shape how a locker room feels in mid-August. There is no dressing up a 35-point night. The question is whether the group treats it as a floor or as a data point.
What comes next for the Sun and the Dream
Connecticut hosts the New York Liberty on Saturday at 1:00 PM ET. New York comes in at 21-14 and 9-4 in the East, off a game where they held off the Sparks 85-81 after nearly giving away a very large lead. The Liberty will also be without Satou Sabally, who has not played since suffering a concussion in June and is stepping away from the team while she recovers. That is a person's health, and it matters more than any standings column. Wishing her a full and unhurried recovery.
For Atlanta, the win is the easy part. What I want to see is whether this was Howard finding a rhythm that travels or one of those nights where the rim looked like a swimming pool. Five threes is a real signal. Two straight would make it a trend.
What I'm watching next: how Connecticut comes out Saturday afternoon at home. Not the result, the first six minutes. A team that just got beaten by 35 tells on itself early, and I want to see whether they compete before the game gets away or after.