UNCASVILLE — When Rachid Meziane arrived in Connecticut for the first time on Saturday, he was immediately struck by how big everything was. Compared to his hometown Chereng in northern France, the glittering towers and bright lights of Mohegan Sun felt like a different universe.
“It’s like, to learn to swim, you have to go to the swimming pool, so I’m getting in the pool as much as possible,” Meziane joked at his introductory press conference Thursday.
Meziane was hired as head coach of the Connecticut Sun on Dec. 4, becoming the first international coach in the franchise’s 27-year history. Meziane has spent 19 years coaching in the French Ligue Feminine including the past five with Villeneuve d’Ascq, leading the club to a league championship in 2024. He has also coached Belgium’s women’s national team since 2022, and the team had its best-ever Olympic finish coming in fourth at the Paris Games this summer.
Though Meziane’s English is still shaky and he had never set foot in the state before this week, the opportunity to join the WNBA was one he couldn’t pass up.
“The WNBA is the best league in the world, and the W has the best players, so I cannot understand who (would) not be interested to join it,” Meziane said. “I knew that it could be a big challenge. It will take lot of hard work, but I’m ready for that … For me, the WNBA was something I had to do. I have to be here to compete against the best teams, the best players, the best coaches in the world.”
The Sun went through a long interview process to find the right replacement for Stephanie White, who left the team after two seasons to serve as head coach of the Indiana Fever. General manager Morgan Tuck, who was officially promoted the day before Meziane’s hire was announced, helped spearhead the search alongside president Jennifer Rizzotti and former general manager Darius Taylor — who is remaining in the Sun front office under a new title. Rizzotti said the trio worked in equal partnership to identify and vet candidates, and Meziane eventually checked every box the team was looking for.
“Me, her and Darius did everything together pretty much. We all reached out to our networks, we identified a list, and we met very regularly, every couple days, about the list,” Rizzotti said. “I set up a lot of initial interviews to kind of vet candidates, and then if I felt like they were the right fit, we then immediately set up an interview for the three of us, and then they would usually follow up with an interview just the two of them, so all three of us had a chance to talk to each candidate multiple times in different settings … It was a very much a combined team effort, like literally 33.3% that each of us put into this process, because we felt like it was really important that we had the perspective of all three of us, and we chose the right person that we all believed would fit.”
Meziane plans to officially move to Connecticut in February, and his wife and children will join him after they finish their school year in July. Meziane has a 9-year-old son and 5-year-old daughter, who he said attended nearly all of his games in France, and he expects they will become the Sun’s biggest fans as soon as they arrive.
One of the Sun’s biggest requirements in their hiring process was finding someone willing to relocate to Connecticut full time. The team has not had a head coach live year-round in the state since Mike Thibault was fired in 2012, and Rizzotti felt the team needed a full-time presence as the WNBA expands with fewer players leaving to compete overseas during the offseason.
“That was honestly one of my first questions to everyone. That’s why I talked to everybody first, because I didn’t want us to interview somebody who wasn’t willing to be a Connecticut native,” Rizzotti said. “I felt like it was important — as we’re going to continue to invest in the team, we’re going to have facilities that match what (players) want, we’re going to have players here in the offseason — that their coaches needed to be here and they needed to be all into that … We needed to have our entire staff feeling invested in that Connecticut future.”
Meziane is also an elite basketball mind, aiming to marry the more team-oriented European game with the aggressive style of the WNBA. He originally played soccer growing up but quickly switched to basketball after developing a fascination with the Xs and Os of the game, and his knowledge immediately endeared him to Rizzotti and Tuck as former players.
“The WNBA has more physicality and some rules are a bit different, but the basketball is universal,” Meziane said. “I moved to basketball because I think in basketball we have more tactics, so it’s something I’m very interested by, and for sure my experience (will help). I’ve coached many players, and many of them are very smart, so I’ve learned from them … It’s easy to talk with Morgan because she is a former player. She played basketball at the top level, so I think that she’s able to really evaluate my skills. We felt our passion, and that’s why I’m here.”
The Sun did not retain any of the assistant coaches from White’s staff and are looking to fill two more positions after hiring former New York Liberty assistant Roneeka Hodges on Jan. 10. Hodges played for 10 years in the WNBA across six different teams, and she also played multiple seasons overseas in France before retiring in 2019. Hodges spent the last three years working under Australian national team coach Sandy Brondello and helped the Liberty to their first WNBA Championship in franchise history in 2024.
Rizzotti said Meziane’s input will be important in rounding out his coaching staff, but she is also prioritizing women and former players in the hiring process to complement his international experience.
“Obviously he wants people that he’s comfortable with, so he had his list of people he wanted us to interview, and for us, having former players on the staff was important to us,” Rizzotti said. “I wanted to make sure, not only do we have former players on staff, but that we are also grooming the next generation of WNBA head coaches in our league … I’ve always felt that you hire the best person for the job — I played for the best coach in the United States (UConn’s Geno Auriemma) who happens to be a man — but it’s not lost on me that women being able to put successful women in leadership roles needs to be a priority.”
