Former UConn women’s basketball star Bria Hartley will miss the remaining five games of the Connecticut Sun’s 2025 season after suffering a right meniscus tear, the team announced Sunday.
Hartley also sat out of the Sun’s 94-70 loss to the Minnesota Lynx on Saturday after sustaining the tear in practice Friday, joining the team on the bench using crutches. This is the 32-year-old guard’s third season-ending injury since 2020. She tore her right ACL while playing for the Phoenix Mercury in 2020 after appearing in 13 games, and she played just six games for Phoenix in 2021 returning from the year-long recovery process. She then tore her left ACL in 2022 while playing with the Sun, suffering the injury just a week after signing a seven-day contract with the team.
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The rehab process for a meniscus tear is less intensive than for an ACL, and the Sun said in a release that Hartley is expected to make a full recovery, so it’s possible she could be ready to compete by the start of the 2026 WNBA season. Hartley is on a one-year contract with the Sun and will be an unrestricted free agent entering next year.
Prior to the injury, Hartley was in the midst of a remarkable comeback season in Connecticut. She hadn’t played in the WNBA since her 2022 ACL tear before signing a contract with the Sun a week in training camp in 2025. She had experience playing for first-year head coach Rachid Meziane when she was a member of the French national team in 2019, and the veteran immediately carved out space in the Sun’s rotation. She started all but six games she appeared in this season averaging 8.9 points and 3.1 assists, and she was the team’s most consistent 3-point shooter hitting 36.7% from beyond the arc.
Hartley was a two-time national champion at UConn from 2010-14 and earned unanimous All-American honors in her senior season. She was drafted No. 7 in the first round of the 2014 WNBA Draft and was selected to the All-Rookie team in her first season with the Washington Mystics.
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