UConn women’s basketball team revels in return to Gampel Pavilion in front of raucous student crowd

For nearly 20 months, Gampel Pavilion lay mostly empty, aside from a sparse crowd of family and friends permitted in to watch the UConn women’s basketball team in action.

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic most fans locally or across the country were forced to watch the ascent of Paige Bueckers, the growth of Christyn Williams and the grit of Aaliyah Edwards from their couches.

Things are not fully back to normal yet, but Friday was the closest the college basketball capital of the world has gotten in awhile. They took a turn for the abnormal when a broken basket curtailed much of the night’s activities, including the planned scrimmage.

Gampel was absolutely rocking Friday night during UConn’s annual First Night as the 2021-22 UConn women’s basketball team was introduced to a students-only crowd that was essentially sold out.

It was the first time 10 of the Huskies’ 14 players took the court in uniform in front of a true crowd, each one showing a bit of their personalities along the way. Freshman Amari DeBerry did “The Worm” on stage, classmate Caroline Ducharme walked out to “Sweet Caroline.” Sophomore Nika Mühl was decked out in a Croatian flag, a homage to her motherland, and graduate transfer Dorka Juhász did the same thing with a Hungarian one.

And to no surprise, the building shook the loudest with the entrance of a certain 5-foot-11 sophomore guard from Hopkins, Minnesota: reigning national player of the year Paige Bueckers. It was, astonishingly, the first time her peers had seen her in-person at Gampel since she took Storrs and the basketball world by storm last season as a freshman.

“Some of the kids that were freshmen here last year, they came to UConn with all these great expectations of going to games and filling the place up and being all rowdy and having a great time, and they never got a chance to do that,” coach Geno Auriemma said prior to the event. “So tonight’s kind of for them and for our players to just be kids. Sometimes it gets lost, that they’re just a bunch of kids playing a kid’s game.”

If the preseason excitement for last year’s squad, headlined by then-mega recruit Bueckers, was greater than usual, then the hype for this year’s team, which returned nearly every contributor from last season and added the likes of top-ranked recruit Azzi Fudd, is deafening.

Fans may get ahead of themselves envisioning undefeated seasons and more banners in Gampel. But Auriemma is well aware of how young this team is and wants to ensure he has “the right things set up for them to be their best.” Even still, he has more depth and a greater variety of skillsets than he’s had in recent years, in part thanks to an influx of talented freshmen. Fittingly, Fudd had the first basket of the team’s scrimmage.

“If we had a game tomorrow,” Auriemma said, “Azzi and Caroline, they look like they just blend right in.”

While the technical glitches prevented fans from outside Gampel from tuning into the festivities, even students on-site will have to wait a little while longer to see what exactly the likes of Fudd, Ducharme, and other newcomers will bring to the table — or to witness some semblance of actual basketball play. The intrasquad scrimmage was eventually scrubbed in favor of a half-hearted effort of half-court 4x4 when the basket could not be raised.

Prior to that DeBerry had a nice moment where she threw it down for a dunk.

Now, it’s back to the practice court where Auriemma is already pleased with the progress his team has made in one week.

“Actually, [it’s been] pretty good,” he said. “I’ve been pleasantly surprised, to be honest with you, that we’ve actually gotten a couple of things accomplished. We’ve got a lot of work to do, obviously. Nine freshmen and sophomores on the team, things move slowly. So, considering that, I think we’ve gotten a bunch of stuff accomplished.”

The Huskies have a closed scrimmage against a Division I opponent on tap, then their Nov. 7 exhibition against Fort Hays State. The season opener is against Arkansas Nov. 14 — when, albeit at the XL Center and not Gampel — fans will file in to be reunited with their beloved Huskies.

Notes

Junior Aubrey Griffin, who was previously dealing with a back issue, sprained her ankle in practice and has been out most of this week. She did not warm up for the team’s shoot-around. ... UConn’s Class of 2022 commits Isuneh Brady and Ayanna Patterson were in attendance at First Night, along with target Kiki Rice, the No. 2 player in the class.

Alexa Philippou can be reached at aphilippou@courant.com