2023-11-26 14:02:25
GEORGE TOWN, Cayman Islands — Nearly six months ago, UConn women’s basketball held its first summer practice ahead of the 2023-24 season.
The Huskies’ roster featured 14 players, all expecting to be healthy and full-go by November.
Paige Bueckers would make her long-awaited return to the court. Ice Brady would finally make collegiate debut. UConn’s lethal backcourt duo of Bueckers and Azzi Fudd would finally get to play together along with assist record-holder Nika Mühl and a healthy Caroline Ducharme. Its frontcourt would be led by Aaliyah Edwards and redshirt freshman Jana El Alfy, who moved from Egypt to Storrs in January to enroll a semester early to get a head start.
But that’s not how it went at all.
In the final week of November, the opening month of the season, UConn has been forced to find a new identity. The No. 6 Huskies head back to Connecticut on Sunday following going 1-1 during five days in the Cayman Islands and will have a week off from games to focus on relearning how to play together.
“Now all of a sudden look around and it’s, ‘So all that time went out the window. All of September went out the window.’ We have to start over,” Huskies’ head coach Geno Auriemma said. “So, we just want to start over now and now that we know what our team is, Carol (Ducharme) is day-to-day, obviously Azzi is out, we just try to patch it together as best we can.”
The program announced on Wednesday that Fudd is out for the remainder of the season with a torn meniscus and ACL. She played only two games this season.
UConn head coach Geno Auriemma watches from the sideline once morest North Carolina State during the first half of an NCAA college basketball game, Sunday, Nov. 12, 2023, in Raleigh, N.C. (AP Photo/Karl B. DeBlaker)
Karl B. DeBlaker/Associated Press
Despite spending all summer healthy and refocusing her rehab, Ducharme continues to deal with lingering side effects from a handful of bad hits throughout her first two years in Storrs.
“Caroline’s always day-to-day,” Auriemma said. “We show up. They tell us if she’s going. She’s going she goes, if she can’t, she can’t.”
The Huskies’ roster shrunk to 13 healthy players in July when El Alfy suffered a season-ending Achilles injury playing for Egypt in the FIBA U19 World Cup.
Patterson played all last season on a bum knee, an injury she initially suffered in high school, and underwent a procedure to fix the problem in the spring. Auriemma expected she’d be back for the start of the season, yet there remains no return timeline for the sophomore.
“We’ve tried a whole bunch of different things and she’s not, you know, she’s not responded consistently like we had hoped from a medical standpoint,” Auriemma said.
Once once more, the injuries have forced Auriemma to play scientist. With Fudd and Ducharme (for the time being) out of the lineup, the Hall of Fame coach is now challenged with experimenting with various combinations to find which five players work well together and which don’t.
He moved Aubrey Griffin up but hasn’t quite nailed down yet who will take the fifth starting spot.
On Friday, in UConn’s loss to No. 2 UCLA, he started freshman KK Arnold. The point guard got into foul trouble early, plus the team isn’t used to playing with three true point guards out on the floor at the same time yet.
Against Kansas on Saturday, he swapped Arnold for fellow freshman Ashlynn Shade. Shade had an impressive start recording four rebounds, four points (on 2 of 6 shooting) and one assist in 18 minutes. But she only played three more minutes in the second half. She also finished with three turnovers.
Aubrey Griffin drives to the basket in UConn’s win over Kansas in the Cayman Islands Classic.
Doug DeVoe/Contributed via Cayman Islands Classic
And of course, different opponents will require different size and skill in the lineup, making the puzzle that much harder to figure out.
The constant change of rotation isn’t new to the Huskies who have been dealing with constant injuries throughout the last two seasons.
“We’ve learned how to cope with that,” Mühl said. “I feel like since I’ve been here, since some people have been here, we have not had a complete lineup not once. So, you know, it’s not anything that we’re not used to. It’s not something that we don’t know how to work with. It’s just a matter of, you know, young guys stepping up. … As long as we trust in and believe in each other and in ourselves, that’s all we need.”
Auriemma knows he needs productive nights from his upperclassmen — Bueckers, Mühl, Griffin and/or Edwards — for the team to win. But with the rest of his roster unexperienced, there’s more learning than normal in each game. It doesn’t help that Edwards is the team’s lone true experienced forward.
“I don’t know that they have any other choice,” Auriemma said of his upperclassmen taking more accountability. “It’s not going to be (given) to one of those younger guys and then they’re not gonna be able to do it. So every night that’s what we have to have from those three.
“That kind of floor leadership from Nika, that kind of, you know, all-around impact that Aubrey had, and Paige being Paige. Like, if we can get that every single night and, you know, things will start to fall into place, but that’s where it’s got to start.”
With UConn’s next game not until next Sunday (Dec. 3 at Texas at 3 p.m. on ABC), Auriemma said trying out new combinations and rotations will be the priority in practice this week along with rest.
The plus side is, it’s only November. There is plenty of time and games, 25 to be exact left in the regular season, to try out new things and learn just what this Husky team can look like.
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