No. 6 UConn women to face No. 20 Maryland with lots of uncertainty as injuries pile up. How to watch, what to know for the matchup

UConn women’s basketball enters this Sunday’s matchup against No. 20 Maryland (8-3, 1-1 Big Ten) surrounded by a plethora of unknowns as it weathers another season filled with injuries.

Just a little over a month into 2022-23 and the No. 6 Huskies (7-1, 1-0 Big East) have already had five players miss full games and two others exit early, the most recent being point guard Nika Mühl and wing Lou Lopez Sénéchal last time out against Princeton.

Mühl, who leads the nation in assists since taking over the starting point guard role for Paige Bueckers (out for the year with a torn ACL), got elbowed by a Princeton player while trying to box her out under the basket and then was hit in the back of the head by Aaliyah Edwards’ knee as she fell hard to the ground. The junior was down for at least a minute and had to be helped off the floor. She was ushered to the locker room with a little over seven minutes left in the third quarter and never returned to the bench.

Lopez Sénéchal sat out the last four-plus minutes, which head coach Geno Auriemma said was related to a sprained foot she’s been dealing with over the last two weeks. Lopez Sénéchal said postgame that her foot was fine, she just tweaked it a little bit and was sitting to be safe in hopes of being available for games moving forward. However, the availability of Mühl is much more uncertain, as is that of graduate forward Dorka Juhász, who has sat out the last six games with a broken left thumb.

There’s a possibility UConn could have just seven players available for Sunday’s game, with only five of those fully healthy. In addition to Lopez Sénéchal’s sprained foot, Caroline Ducharme is still working her way back to true form after dealing with neck stiffness at the start of the season.

The Huskies were just beginning to reconcile with how they were going to play without star guard Azzi Fudd for the next three to six weeks due to a right knee injury she suffered the game before Princeton at Notre Dame last Sunday. She was averaging 24 points per game to lead the team.

“You look at our bench and you go, every kid on the bench is somebody we count on to score points,” Auriemma said postgame Friday. “And now we’re gonna have a team out on the floor where the one thing that they don’t think they’re comfortable with is scoring points. And I don’t know how we can win without scoring. So right, it’s not about Xs and Os, it’s about the mindset that they all of a sudden are going to have to acquire.”

Auriemma also noted that Mühl told him she felt fine in the locker room, but the team was waiting to find out more. UConn didn’t have an update as of Saturday morning and a team spokesperson said there was no timeline for an update on her status.

If Mühl is out the Huskies will have to play without a point guard on the floor or turn to freshman Inês Bettencourt, who saw nine minutes on the court Friday and made free throws to secure the 69-64 win.

UConn was propelled to victory behind a career-high 29 points from Aubrey Griffin and ended the game with a lineup with her, Edwards, Ayanna Patterson, Ducharme and Bettencourt on the floor. Amari DeBerry also played 29 minutes to help make up for the depth down low, with Auriemma often opting for a three forwards on the floor at once.

“Until we get some semblance of order back, every lineup that we put out there works fairly well until that moment when it doesn’t,” Auriemma said. “And now you’re scrambling around trying to figure out who do I get out first because you know you need to make a change because it can’t last. So we just have to find how long can a particular lineup be out on the floor together and be effective before it starts to go the other way and then be ready to make the changes we have to make.”

It would surely help the Huskies to have Juhász back in the rotation, but that remains up in the air.

“I don’t know,” Auriemma said Friday. “When someone gets an injury there’s got to be a mental part to it that has to be addressed. Meaning if someone tells you, ‘Hey, it’s okay, you can probably go,’ mentally you have to be ready to go. And if you’re not it’s not gonna work. And my conversation with Dorka is she’s not there yet. And maybe she will be by Sunday. She’s practiced a couple days, so that’s helped, and then we have a long layoff after Sunday. So right now I can’t tell you yes or no about Sunday.”

Maryland head coach Brenda Frese said Saturday that she was preparing as if Juhász was playing. The Terrapins also ran through defensive sets with a practice player wearing Muhl’s No. 10. Regardless of whether those two play or not, Frese knows not to underestimate Auriemma and the Huskies, who have beaten Maryland in all seven prior meetings.

“Everybody has injuries, they understand no one’s going to feel sorry for them,” Frese said. “We’ve all gone through it. Last time I checked they still are bringing top-10 players off the bench now into the starting lineup. So very dangerous team, great size and length. … So preparation doesn’t change. We all kind of know that the personnel that they have, which is a lot of talented pieces.”

Maryland was plagued by injuries last season and now, with a completely new-look roster, has had its fair share of woes this year as well. The Terps lost Allie Kubek (ACL) and Emma Chardon (torn meniscus) to knee injuries and were down to just nine players in a win over Purdue last time out, with Mila Reynolds out with a lower body injury and Ava Sciolla sick. Reynolds remains day-to-day but Sciolla is back and feeling better, according to a team spokesperson.

The win over the Boilermakers was Maryland’s second buzzer-beater in a week, with guard Shyanne Shellers coming up clutch. The Terps also knocked off No. 5 Notre Dame (No. 7 at the time) on the road behind a last-second fadeaway from star Diamond Miller on Dec. 1. They’ve been more inconsistent this year than usual under Frese, who just reached 600 career wins; they also knocked off No. 17 Baylor but have losses to DePaul and Nebraska.

Still, UConn has quite the challenge in store as relies on its bench players for a top-20 matchup on the road.

“We’ll be able to put something together as to how we’re going to attack Maryland, how we’re going to try to defend them,” Auriemma said. “But in terms of can we get our team to believe that yes, we can score enough points given who we have sitting on the bench, that’s going to be a tough sell. But then again, kids surprise you, right? So hopefully they’ll surprise us.”