If one were to watch Connecticut Sun games over the past few seasons, one has been treated to the scintillating play of names such as Jonquel Jones, Alyssa Thomas, DeWanna Bonner, Brionna Jones, DiJonai Carrington, Brittney Griner and Aneesah Morrow.
And a great deal of those moments throughout much of the 2020s for the Sun have had a signature voice attached to them – one that is authentically New England.
That voice is Brendan Glasheen who has not only made a name for himself as one of the most revered voices in sports across his region, but has earned national praise from WNBA fans outside of the New England area as well.
All great broadcasters travel a journey – and for Glasheen, that journey began when he was a child. He mentioned when he would purchase video games such as NBA2K, Madden or MLB The Show, he would mute the announcers that were on the game and put his own announcer’s spin on what was happening during the game play.
Glasheen also recollects how he would get inspiration from either local or national games he would watch as a youth.
That’s always cool to think about every once in a while and reflect. This used to be sitting in the bedroom with the TV and a PlayStation 2.
–Brendan Glasheen, Connecticut Sun Play-By-Play Voice
Glasheen’s enthusiasm for sports would only grow as he advanced into his high school years. As he played sports – particularly baseball – while in high school, he realized several things. One of them was that he always wanted to be involved in the day-to-day operations of a sports team.
Another was that it was unlikely he would have a path to the pros as an athlete.
I was more of the glue guy, end-of-the-bench guy, but I watched the game closely because I didn’t play a lot – especially in baseball.
–Brendan Glasheen, Connecticut Sun Play-By-Play Voice
Glasheen as a teen was at a crossroads. He wanted to be involved with sports but was not high on his prospects making the big time on the field.
Syracuse University – the very school that Bob Costas attended – would be where Glasheen would spend his college years. He proudly graduated in 2015. But there is life during college and life after college. The latter would mean looking for professional work to launch one’s career.
This was where Glasheen’s baseball background would come in useful where his talents would take him to the Buffalo metropolitan area. He would land a job for a year with the Batavia Muckdogs which were the Short Season A affiliate of the Miami Marlins at the time and part of the New York-Penn League of Minor League Baseball. Today, the Muckdogs play in the Perfect Game Collegiate Baseball League.
According to Glasheen, getting his professional start in baseball was a good way to practice his skills on the mic since mistakes could be made without scores of people constantly lambasting him for errors.
Baseball was a passion of mine. And it was just a way to get reps. Baseball, to me, was the best workshop for reps because there’s a game every day. To be quite honest, you have the opportunity to mess up. The only people that were probably listening (chuckles) or watching were parents or girlfriends or family members or fellow farm league clubs.
–Brendan Glasheen, Connecticut Sun Play-By-Play Voice
His stint with the Muckdogs lasted a year – through the 2015 season. Then, a drastic shift happened in Glasheen’s career and life when he headed to South Carolina to become the Assistant Director of Broadcasting and Media Relations for the Columbia Fireflies.
It was hot. And that was the most I’ve really moved at that point.
–Brendan Glasheen, Connecticut Sun Play-By-Play Voice
At the time, the Fireflies were the Single-A affiliate of the New York Mets and now are the same for the Kansas City Royals. Such a move provided obvious culture shock for Glasheen – a New Englander still relatively fresh out of college and looking for as much work as possible to build a resume having to leave far from home to pad said resume.
Such a move can not only be physically and mentally taxing but also financially taxing considering South Carolina is not exactly in close proximity to New England.
For me, when you live in the northeast and you live at home out of college and you move your life for five months (for) baseball season, you’re not making a lot of money, which you accept that. You know that going in.
–Brendan Glasheen, Connecticut Sun Play-By-Play Voice
The season following Glasheen’s with the Fireflies would be when the team would receive increased media attention because legendary Florida Gators quarterback Tim Tebow would be part of the roster following a career in the NFL that fizzled out.
As the Fireflies brought Tebow in, Glasheen was continue to plant his flag in his home region of New England. He would find work in a variety of places – including working Holy Cross football and basketball on WVEI-AM in Worcester which is part of the Boston-based WEEI Sports Radio Network.
There was no such thing yet as ESPN Plus, But each of these conferences would have (their own streaming services). For example, the Patriot League Network. So, Patriot League TV was my way to get started.
–Brendan Glasheen, Connecticut Sun Play-By-Play Voice
Holy Cross was one of the founding members of the Patriot League. In addition to Patriot League TV, Glasheen’s voice has also been heard on ACC Network Extra via work he did for Boston College athletics from 2017 to 2024.
National opportunities that would Glasheen would land included those with the Action Network and DraftKings. Glasheen has also hosted NBA events in addition to being on the call for games of the Maine Celtics – the G-League affiliate of the Boston Celtics – for four years.
His resume also includes work calling Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association high school football championships for television and radio along with radio work on WBZ-FM 98.5 The Sports Hub in Boston. If one were to look up the word “workhorse” in the dictionary, one may find Glasheen’s face.
So you’re putting all of these reps together, which is great. And then your hope is to get feedback and try to latch on from place to place.
–Brendan Glasheen, Connecticut Sun Play-By-Play Voice
The track record that Glasheen had established was nothing short of impressive. But where did his WNBA opportunity come from?
Glasheen has been on the call for a variety of sports – including football, women’s basketball, men’s basketball, softball, baseball, volleyball and hockey. So one may do a double take when learning that Glasheen’s path to the WNBA actually was paved through…lacrosse.
I did two years of minor league baseball, moved off of baseball because I started getting more work in college lacrosse. There was a network that started in Massachusetts in Woburn which is near where I lived. So, it just worked out great. The money was a little bit better.
–Brendan Glasheen, Connecticut Sun Play-By-Play Voice
In 2016, the same year that Glasheen began his work with the Fireflies, the Lax Sports Network would launch on platforms such as Roku and AppleTV. Glasheen would call college lacrosse and Major League Lacrosse matchups for Lax Sports Network which later rebranded in 2022 as Lacrosse TV.
The fact that Lacrosse TV was – and still is – based in Massachusetts appropriate when one considers how big a deal lacrosse is in the northeast.
His work in collegiate lacrosse would translate into an opportunity with to call games for the New England Black Wolves of the National Lacrosse League. NLL, which specializes in indoor lacrosse, is based in Philadelphia but currently has seven of its 13 teams based in Canada.
Of the U.S. markets they had, they would fly the players in on weekends and they’d play nine home games, nine road games, 18-game season.
–Brendan Glasheen, Connecticut Sun Play-By-Play Voice
Currently, NLL’s American markets are Buffalo, Denver, Atlanta, Las Vegas, Rochester and San Diego. Its Canadian locales are Vancouver, Toronto, Ottawa, Saskatchewan, Calgary, Halifax and Oshawa – a town in Ontario that is part of the Greater Toronto Area.
NLL seasons begin in November and last until May. Glasheen would be on the call for the Black Wolves for all of the 2018-19 season and the 2019-20 season before said campaign was halted in March due to the pandemic.
The team would later relocate to Albany and is currently residing in Oshawa where it is now the FireWolves.
What particularly helped Glasheen find his way to the WNBA was the home base of the Black Wolves – Mohegan Sun Arena, the same home base of the Sun.
In the time being here for the year and a half I was doing those games, I met a lot of the staff – ticket sales, social media, marketing staff, community relations. They all worked for the Sun. They worked for the Connecticut Sun. To be honest, that’s when I started paying attention, just keeping an eye on the W.
–Brendan Glasheen, Connecticut Sun Play-By-Play Voice
It was during this time that Glasheen started more closely following the Sun. In 2019, Connecticut competed in a thrilling five-game Finals against the Washington Mystics. Glasheen says he also started more closely following the UConn women’s program which was keyed at the time by a young Napheesa Collier and a highly ballyhooed phenom from Minnesota named Paige Bueckers was in the process of becoming a Husky.
Glasheen says he also became familiar with the heroics of another future WNBA star by the name of Arike Ogunbowale who was making a name for herself by draining game-winning buckets for Notre Dame in March Madness.
Those connections that Glasheen would make with much of that Sun staff would pay dividends for his career. One of those connections was Amber Cox who was vice president of the Sun and the Black Wolves at the time. He recalls conversations he would have with Cox where he would mention his background as a basketball broadcaster. Today, Cox is the Chief Operating Officer and General Manager of the Indiana Fever.
A golden opportunity knocked for Glasheen when it was known that Bob Heussler, who had been the play-by-play voice for the Sun since the team relocated from Orlando in 2003, would be putting away his microphone prior to the 2021 season. Glasheen interviewed and landed the Connecticut gig.
During Glasheen’s tenure on the call for the Sun, he has seen the team through highs, such as another Finals appearance in 2022, and lows such as last season. Three moments in particular stick out during his time with Connecticut.
One of which also occurred during that 2022 season – and it involved one of the Sun’s marquee players at the time in Alyssa Thomas who is now with the Phoenix Mercury. The year before, Thomas suffered an Achilles injury that sidelined her for all but three games that season.
In 2022, Glasheen got to travel with the team. He had a bird’s eye view to Thomas leading Connecticut to a 94-84 victory at the Minnesota Lynx in late July. Thomas scored 15 points, dished out 12 assists and hauled in 10 rebounds in what was the first-ever triple-double in the history of the franchise. What made it even more special, says Glasheen, was how influential being in Minnesota was to Thomas’ recovery.
The first place that she started to run again on her feet and really accelerate the recovery process was at Target Center in Minnesota. That was a full-circle moment for her to then a year later, be in that building again, and we’re there, logs a triple-double and then she does a postgame interview with us after the game.
–Brendan Glasheen, Connecticut Sun Play-By-Play Voice
Thomas completed her triple-double effort in the final seconds of the contest with her 10th rebound. Glasheen recalls how earlier in the contest, she went for a rebound but was not credited with one because the ball went out of bounds, prompting Thomas to slam the ball to the ground in frustration. She wanted that first-ever Connecticut triple-double badly – and the team and coaching staff wanted it for her.
What also stuck out to Glasheen was the height those Sun teams had between names like Thomas, Bonner, Jonquel Jones and Bri Jones (all six-footers) – and having to travel on domestic flights as opposed to the charters currently enjoyed by WNBA players.
Another highlight of Glasheen’s time with Sun occurred the following year. In early June of 2023, Bonner guided Connecticut to a 94-77 victory over the Las Vegas Aces with a 41-point performance. Bonner’s offensive outburst placed the Aces in the loss column for the first time that season.
Glasheen also remembers two years ago when the Sun held a home game at Boston’s TD Garden. It took place in August of 2024 and resulted in a 69-61 victory over the Los Angeles Sparks in front of a sold-out crowd in the City of Beans. Considering Glasheen is from Boston, the occasion had to be additionally special for him considering it was the first-ever women’s professional hoops contest in Boston.
The WNBA is more high-profile than ever, and opportunities in the W can translate to even more major career moves.
The last couple of years, I’ve been very fortunate with the WNBA being a summer league, I’ve been able to fill out a bulk of my 12 months with basketball.
–Brendan Glasheen, Connecticut Sun Play-By-Play Voice
For the last two years, several of those months at the beginning of the calendar year have been spent working play-by-play on TNT and TruTV for Unrivaled.
I thought Columbia was as far south as I’d move and I’ve been in Miami the last two winters for 10 weeks, which as a New Englander, it’s not so bad.
–Brendan Glasheen, Connecticut Sun Play-By-Play Voice
This past season would see the debut of two new teams – Breeze BC and Hive BC in addition to Lunar Owls BC, Phantom BC, Rose BC, Mist BC, Vinyl BC and Laces BC. The inaugural Unrivaled championship was won by Rose BC but 2026 belonged to the Misties.
Glasheen says that because of the hybrid bubble element of Unrivaled that it has allowed him to get to know the players on a deeper level.
You get to really connect the players on a more regular basis because they’re in a really good mood too. It’s their offseason, they’re getting paid well. They’re not overseas, they get to stay in the states. It’s not a bad deal when you think about it as a player. You get 10 weeks to kind of rev it up for the next summer, but also play some competitive ball.
–Brendan Glasheen, Connecticut Sun Play-By-Play Voice
Glasheen’s experience in South Florida being on the call for Unrivaled’s game has included the opportunity to work alongside a number of talented names such as Ros Gold-Onwude and Sarah Kustok. It has also given Glasheen the chance to collaborate with a legend of the women’s game in Lisa Leslie.
We didn’t know each other at all going into it. We went to a couple practices out of the first season and could not have been more welcoming, a humble superstar who embraced me. I, of course, embraced her and we kind of took it and ran with it.
–Brendan Glasheen, Connecticut Sun Play-By-Play Voice
Unrivaled has garnered a great deal of praise from many a women’s basketball fan from the venue it plays in to the amenities it provides to how the games are presented on television to the sponsorship deals that have been secured.
Another takeaway that Glasheen has from his years working Unrivaled is how those that he met while in Miami become familiar faces when it is time to gear up for the WNBA season.
They checked a lot of boxes and do a lot of stuff really, really well. But for me, it’s really helped my career in the sense that I’ve gotten to know more and more people and that’s the best part when you come back in the summer. You see people from the Miami experience.
–Brendan Glasheen, Connecticut Sun Play-By-Play Voice
Another positive of Unrivaled is how the full-court 3-on-3 league has allowed for many a player to still make an honest living without the rigors of having to go overseas once the WNBA season concludes because of the financial stake players have in the league.
Also, even though the league takes place during the winter months outside of the WNBA season, Glasheen mentions how one could not tell that it is technically offseason basketball when observing the energy players bring with them to Unrivaled ball.
The basketball is fantastic. They’re playing hard, it’s competitive. They’re not treating it like it’s an offseason league even though we know for most it is.
–Brendan Glasheen, Connecticut Sun Play-By-Play Voice
Calling Sun games has given Glasheen the opportunity to collaborate with other talented voices such as Terrika Foster-Brasby, Meghan McKeown and Edona Thaqi. As far as this season for the Sun is concerned – Connecticut’s Sunset Season – it has seen more lowlights than highlights. The Sun’s most recent contest would see the team play a close contest at Mohegan Sun Arena against the Washington Mystics, but Connecticut would fall to Washington by a final score of 88-81. The Sun return to the court on Friday to take on the 7-8 Toronto Tempo.
As of this writing, Connecticut is last in the WNBA at 2-14. Connecticut has benefitted from stellar seasons courtesy of Brittney Griner, Diamond Miller, Hailey Van Lith, Saniya Rivers, Aaliyah Edwards and Aneesah Morrow, but the Sun’s lone wins of the season have occurred on the road at the Seattle Storm (80-78 on May 20) and at home against the Sparks (84-81 at PeoplesBank Arena in Hartford).
The recent return of Leïla Lacan from La Boulangère Wonderligue should provide a boost for the team, Glasheen believes. She claimed championship honors and a Finals MVP with Basket Landes and is a playmaker on both ends of the floor.
One of the elements of Connecticut’s Sunset Season is honoring legends that have shaped the franchise. One of those legends was Jones who currently wears seafoam, black and copper Liberty colors. She was recognized during the a recent contest between the Sun and New York Liberty on June 8 (an 89-80 Liberty win) and her jersey number was raised to the rafters of Mohegan Sun Arena.
Others that will be recognized throughout this season include Alyssa Thomas, Jasmine Thomas, Tina Charles and coaches Mike Thibault and Curt Miller.
There’s that cloud over everyone’s head of, like, wow – this is it.
–Brendan Glasheen, Connecticut Sun Play-By-Play Voice
That cloud is, of course, the reality that the Sun are playing its final season in Connecticut and will move to Houston following this season to become the Comets. Glasheen says the recent honoring of Jones as a Sun Legend is beginning to make things feel more real but that will really be the case in a couple of months.
Ask me in August because I’ll say, ok, now it’s feeling more real.
–Brendan Glasheen, Connecticut Sun Play-By-Play Voice
Glasheen praised everyone in the organization from the players to the coaching staff to the front office staff for handling what must be a difficult situation in a very professional manner. He remembers last year when an initial report came out that the Mohegan Tribe had hired Allen & Company, a New York investment bank, to explore a sale of the team that the players kept the focus on the court.
The players handled it so well. They said, hey, it’s cliché but handle your stuff on the court. You take care of that part and we’ll put you in the best positions to succeed surrounding that.
–Brendan Glasheen, Connecticut Sun Play-By-Play Voice
As for Glasheen’s future following this season, he says he has yet to have to discussions on what is next for him within the WNBA following this season. He did praise Connecticut’s front office – specifically the Sun’s team president – for wanting to ensure everyone affected by the move will land on their feet when the dust settles.
It’s just too early to know. Houston, maybe. Around the rest of the league, I’m not sure. But, I know that they have our best interests here. Jen Rizzotti’s told everybody that. Whether you go to Houston or not, they’ve got everybody’s best interests to try to keep you, whether it’s with them or in the league in some capacity.
–Brendan Glasheen, Connecticut Sun Play-By-Play Voice
One would believe that is much of a name for himself as Glasheen has built within women’s basketball that he will continue to be in high demand following the 2026 season.
He is also aware of his current status as an established name in sports broadcasting and understands that there are others who would want to pave a same path for themselves because they were inspired by Glasheen. His advice to young sports broadcasters is to emphasize the ability to give multiple sports a try as it will give them an opportunity to build a more robust demo reel.
I’ve always had a longtime passion for basketball, but I think any young person who wants to do this, any career in broadcasting, versatility is very important.
–Brendan Glasheen, Connecticut Sun Play-By-Play Voice
If you can cover more sports, you are more valuable. Your versatility can take you places and fill in the gaps in your calendar.
–Brendan Glasheen, Connecticut Sun Play-By-Play Voice
