‘It’s gut-wrenching’: How UConn women’s basketball is dealing with Azzi Fudd reinjuring her right knee

Azzi Fudd could be seen leaning on crutches and wearing a black metal brace on her right leg at Gampel Pavilion before UConn women’s basketball practice on Friday.

As the No. 5 Huskies embark on five games in 11 days, starting with a matchup against Butler on Saturday, they’ll be without the star sophomore guard. They could be down to just seven players once again, possibly eight depending the status of Ayanna Patterson, who has missed the last three games with a concussion. Caroline Ducharme, who also suffered a concussion, still remains out.

“I think these next 11 days are probably going to be the most intense,” UConn coach Geno Auriemma said. “This will be the toughest stretch of the season coming up.”

Fudd reinjured her right knee against Georgetown on Jan. 14 and will be out indefinitely, the program announced Friday. Auriemma said that there will be no weight bearing on her knee for the next two weeks and then she will be re-evaluated after that.

“Every time someone has something that happens that’s involving their knees, especially someone who from high school on has had some issues, you always worry how long will it take,” Auriemma said when asked about Fudd’s timeline. “Everybody heals differently; I don’t think anybody can definitively say. There’s no surgery involved so we’ll wait and see how she feels. I wouldn’t put too much stock in that brace that’s more of a just keep the weight off and give it the best chance to heal.”

UConn had just gotten Fudd back from missing eight games, making the news that much harder for her and the team to deal with. She averaged 24 points on 54.4% shooting from the field and 43.5% from deep through the first six games of her sophomore season before injuring the knee at Notre Dame on Dec. 4.

Fudd came back for the first time on Jan. 11 at St. John’s. The Huskies were optimistic after that game, feeling as though they were finally starting to get back to a semblance of normal after dealing with injuries all season, as well as the one before that.

“It’s tough,” Aaliyah Edwards said. “You feel like you’re on a wave of just going up an incline, but then you get hit by something, you’re just declining again. Bu we’ve been dealing with this for a couple of weeks now, so it’s just another thing that we need to just to bounce back (from).”

Edwards and her teammates are doing their best to support Fudd as she deals with this latest injury. Auriemma said Fudd’s spirits were low when she first found out the news after undergoing tests earlier this week. She’s dealt with injury after injury for some time now. In addition to missing the eight games earlier this year,she was hampered by a foot injury throughout her freshman season that kept her out 11 games and limited her movement the rest of the time. She also tore the ACL and MCL in her right knee in the spring of her sophomore year of high school.

“You really say to yourself, ‘How much have we really seen of a 100 percent healthy Azzi Fudd?” Auriemma said. “It’s been just a few times relative to how long she’s been in college and what’s frustrating is you see what she can do when she is (healthy). Forget how much she means to us and what we’re trying to do, it’s just if you’re a basketball player and you love to play and you’re as good as she is, when you’re not able to be on the court it’s gut-wrenching in some ways, especially when you spend all that time rehabbing to come back for what, two games.”

As for Patterson, Auriemma said that the freshman forward has been practicing over the last couple of days with no contact. Whether or not she’ll play against Butler remains to be seen.

“The actual tangible right now is we need (Ayanna) back. Hopefully [Saturday] will be full contact,” Auriemma said. “[Saturday] we’ll know at shootaround if Ayanna is gonna go.”

As if UConn wasn’t already dealing with enough, Inês Bettencourt missed a couple of days this week with a non-COVID illness. She was back practicing on Friday, though, and will be available on Saturday.

“She says she feels better,” Auriemma said. “So we need those three guys, Inês, Amari [DeBerry] and Ayanna to come in and add a little bit of stability; a little bit of like maintain. They don’t even have to come in and give us the lead or expand the lead, they’re just gonna come in and be solid.”

For as well as they’ve managed to continue performing at a high level, the injuries – which also include season-ending issues suffered by Paige Bueckers and Ice Brady in the preseason, among several others up and down the roster— have certainly taken a toll.

The grind of this upcoming stretch will make those absences felt even more.

“I think it’s difficult because it’s not a one-time thing,” Auriemma said. “It’s just something that it’s piling on, it’s adding one more thing to have to deal with for her. And that’s frustrating obviously for her and it’s frustrating for us, but we’ve just tried to worry about what can we do that’s within our control and what can we do to fix whatever is broken. But there’s just some things we can’t do anything about.

“To be honest with you, our kids are tired. Take a look at our five starters, I mean, they’re tired. They’re physically tired, they’re mentally tired, as anybody would be at this point in the season having played that many minutes and with that constant, you know, but somehow, someway, we find a way. And we’ll just keep doing that.”

What to know

Site: Gampel Pavilion

Time: 12 p.m.

Series: UConn, 4-0

Last meeting: No. 5 UConn 80, Butler 47 on Jan. 3, 2023 in Indianapolis

TV: SNY; Allen Bestwick, Meghan Culmo and Maria Marino

Streaming: SNY app

Radio: UConn Sports Network on 97.9 ESPN