Natisha Hiedeman Makes A Splash With The Connecticut Sun

We’ve already talked in these here digital pages about Natisha Hiedeman becoming the first Marquette women’s basketball player to earn an in-season contract in the WNBA. We followed that up with highlighting Hiedeman becoming the first Golden Eagles to play in a WNBA regular season game.

The chronicling of history wouldn’t be complete if we didn’t talk about Hiedeman’s — and thus Marquette’s — first ever WNBA points.

They came on Wednesday, as her Connecticut Sun visited the Atlanta Dream, the exact same team that gave Hiedeman her first regular season contract. She first entered the game at the break between the first and second quarter, and it took her less 90 seconds to fire in a three in transition:

Looks just like a bucket that we saw her hit over and over again in the McGuire Center.

The best part about this? Hiedeman wasn’t anywhere close to done.

She finished with 10 points in the quarter, helping push the Sun from down 11 at the end of the first quarter to trailing by only two at halftime. Let’s just say that the Sun social media team was allllllllllll the way here for what was going down.

NEAT.

Hiedeman finished with just short of 19 minutes played in the game as the Sun suffered a 78-75 loss to the Dream. It’s now five straight losses for Connecticut, and that is not what you want. However, it’s clear that Hiedeman is getting comfortable. She shot 4-for-5 in the game, with the miss coming in the third quarter, and added two rebounds and two assists. Even with his team in a slide, head coach Curt Miller was comfortable with letting his brand new rookie roll out there and do what she does, which is pretty impressive. We’ll have to see what happens if she doesn’t knock down her first four shots in a game, but for now, things seem to be going pretty well for Hiedeman in the pro ranks.

Connecticut returns home for their next game as they look to break their losing streak. They’ll be hosting the Phoenix Mercury on Friday night. Tipoff is set for 7pm Central, and the broadcast will be on ESPN2. Phoenix is 7-6 on the season, but they’ve won their last two games, and Diana Taurasi is set to return from back surgery any moment now.