No. 4 UConn women back to (almost) full strength for game at St. John's
Jan. 10—For the UConn women's basketball team, there's been so many things to think about.
Why have they been the subject of an unending line of illnesses and injuries, right down to the coaching staff — to the point where assistant coach Morgan Valley took to burning sage at the Werth Family Champions Center recently to ward off any potential evil spirits?
What should they watch on team movie night, an activity which took the place of Sunday's originally planned game day, with fourth-ranked UConn's matchup against DePaul postponed when the Huskies had fewer than the Big East minimum of seven healthy players?
"As a competitor, you're ready to go," UConn associate head coach Chris Dailey, filling in for head coach Geno Auriemma, said of the postponement. "I think the kids were like, 'All right, we're going.' But then as a coach, I think you have to step back and look at the bigger picture and I think that's what we did.
"With only having six available players, it wasn't in our best interest."
On Wednesday, the Huskies go back to thinking about basketball.
UConn (13-2, 6-0) takes on St. John's (14-1, 5-1) at UBS Arena in Elmont, N.Y. (8 p.m., SNY).
Of UConn's two players hurt during Thursday's 73-37 victory Thursday at Xavier, Aaliyah Edwards (ankle) and Ayanna Patterson (concussion), Edwards has returned to the rotation, putting the Huskies back at seven.
That puts Patterson, a freshman, in concussion protocol along with sophomore Caroline Ducharme. Neither will travel to the game, Dailey said.
Azzi Fudd, UConn's leading scorer who has been sidelined since Dec. 4 with a right knee injury, will be a game-time decision, according to the coach. Meanwhile, All-American Paige Bueckers and freshman Ice Brady are out for the season.
UConn's healthy seven are Edwards, who has had seven games with 20-or-more points this season; graduate students Dorka Juhasz and Lou Lopez Senechal, who have provided leadership; junior point guard Nika Muhl, redshirt junior Aubrey Griffin, sophomore Amari DeBerry and freshman Ines Bettencourt.
"It's an emotional roller-coaster, for sure," Juhasz said prior to Tuesday morning's practice. "Obviously, this was the first time where we actually didn't have enough players. Before that, we always found a way to put seven players out there that can compete and that can win.
"This time, we were like, 'Oh, we don't have enough. Having that conversation with the coaches was super hard on us because obviously we want to play, we want to compete. We were ready to play this game."
The Huskies actually moved up a notch to No. 4 in the Associated Press Top 25 despite their travails, which come on the heels of a similar situation last year in which Bueckers, Fudd, Muhl, Juhasz and Griffin also missed time.
Juhasz said the joke among her teammates after last season was, "It can't get any worse than this."
"Kind of like, this season came along and we already started losing Paige (knee). So that was kind of the first point of injuries beginning. There was always just something," Juhasz said. "Kind of like, we were in a loop, you know?"
Dailey said the coaches try not to dwell on the situation, but it's hard not to look around and see what's missing — "It's just a lot," she said. "I hate to keep saying it because it sounds like we're whining about it and we're definitely not whiners. It's just a fact."
Still, UConn's standard hasn't changed. The Huskies will go against a St. John's team led by redshirt senior guard Jayla Everett, who scored 26 points in Sunday's 71-52 win over Xavier. Everett leads the team and ranks in the top five in the Big East in scoring with 17.3 points per game.
The Red Storm are receiving votes in the AP Top 25 and have been ranked as high as 24th.
Dailey, with Auriemma since his arrival in 1985, is 17-0 in games filling in for the head coach, who has missed four games this season. There is no timetable for Auriemma's return.
"I'm really hoping we're close to finally getting out of it," Juhasz said of the streak of injuries. "We're pretty tough. The way we responded to these situations, even though we have so many different lineups, I think we responded really, really good."
"We were put in a tough situation and we keep playing UConn basketball and we keep respecting the standard that's always been," Lopez Senechal said. "We try to stay UConn and just be UConn as much as possible."
Notes
UConn announced Tuesday that the game which was postponed against DePaul will be made up at 7 p.m. Jan. 23 at Gampel Pavilion. The game at Seton Hall scheduled for Jan. 19 will now be played at 7 p.m. Jan. 17. ... the Huskies' game against top-ranked South Carolina, a rematch of last year's national championship game won by the Gamecocks, is sold out. That game is scheduled for noon, Feb. 5, at the XL Center.
