UConn women wrapup: An injury-riddled season filled with challenges

Apr. 15—The UConn women's basketball team played 17 teams, accounting for 23 games, that advanced to the 2023 NCAA Tournament.

Yet through much of the season the toughest opponent the Huskies faced were themselves.

Injuries and illness led to inconsistency. Only once during the regular season did they have the 10 healthy players they had when games began on Nov. 10 available. And perhaps there was nothing more frustrating than seeing 2021 national Player of the Year and two-time NCAA Regional Most Outstanding Player and all-Final Four pick Paige Bueckers in a sweatsuit.

"There has never been a UConn season like this one," coach Geno Auriemma said.

The Huskies finished 31-6, their 30th consecutive 25-win season and the 26th time in those 30 years they reached 30 wins. They were conference regular-season and tournament champions for a 10th straight year as they swept the Big East titles for the third time in a row since their return. They extended their NCAA-record runs to 29 straight NCAA Tournament first-round wins and 29 consecutive Sweet 16 appearances.

But their streaks of 16 straight Elite Eight and 14 Final Four appearances ended March 25 when they lost to Ohio State 73-61 in the Seattle Regional 1 semifinals at Climate Pledge Arena. In early February, a run of 1,083 games without back-to-back losses that lasted close to 30 years was snapped when they lost consecutive games to South Carolina and Marquette. Injuries caught up to them so much in January that they had to postpone a game with DePaul because it didn't have the Big East minimum seven healthy scholarship players.

The last time a UConn season ended earlier than this was in 1993.

"That's the price you pay for playing at a place like UConn," Auriemma said after the Ohio State loss. "Anytime you go someplace where the rewards and the benefits are greater than they are anywhere else, the other side is also there. They didn't let anybody down. I'm sure they just don't feel good about their own individual performance today. That I'm sure is very disappointing for them. Did they disappoint anyone? No. That is something they should never feel.

"If your effort is bad, if you just don't show up, that's different. But something like this they have no one to apologize to and no reason to apologize for anything."

Coming off a stirring run to the 2022 NCAA final, UConn was expected to be the top challenger to champion South Carolina. But that changed on Aug. 1 when Bueckers, who missed 19 games in 2021-22 with a left knee injury, tore the ACL in the left knee while playing in a pick-up game and had season-ending surgery. In October, promising freshman Ice Brady was ruled out for the year after surgery to repair a torn patellar tendon in her right knee.

It would be an on-going issue. Only graduate student wing Lou Lopez Sénéchal and junior forward Aaliyah Edwards would play in all 37 games and Lopez Sénéchal did it playing through a knee problem that may delay the start of her rookie season with the WNBA's Dallas Wings. Sophomore guard Azzi Fudd (right knee) missed 22 games, classmate Caroline Ducharme (concussion) missed 14 games, and graduate student center Dorka Juhász eight (broken left thumb, sprained left ankle) missed eight games. Freshman forward Ayanna Patterson (right ankle) missed three games, redshirt junior forward Aubrey Griffin (COVID-19) missed two games but also struggled through the NCAA Tournament with back spasms, and junior point guard Nika Mühl (concussion protocol) missed one game.

Through all the ups and downs, however, the Huskies never came apart.

"We had a bond, and no one wanted to let each other down," Ducharme said. "Every team always says, 'We love each other,' and stuff like that. But this year we wanted to play for other and it allowed us to do what we did."

UConn got off to a strong start with Top 10-wins over Texas, North Carolina State, and Iowa (erasing an 11-point third-quarter deficit) with the latter two without Juhász. But in the first half of the Dec. 4 game at Notre Dame, Edwards fell into Fudd's right knee after being fouled by the Irish's KK Bransford. Fudd tried to continue but Auriemma, noticing she was not right, got her out. She would play only 32 minutes the rest of the regular season as she hurt the knee again against Georgetown on Jan. 18.

After Mühl took a hit in the head against Princeton and went into concussion protocol, the Huskies took seven healthy players to Maryland. The starting point guard was freshman Inês Bettencourt, who four months earlier was headed to Northwest Florida State College and its junior college basketball program. She came to Storrs after the Bueckers injury. Bettencourt, who made the clinching free throws against Princeton, performed admirably but the Huskies lost.

The bigger loss, though, was suffered by Auriemma. His mother, Marsiella, passed away on Dec. 8. Over the next three weeks, the Hall of Fame coach would miss four games due to illness. Associate head coach Chris Dailey guided UConn to wins over Florida State, Seton Hall, Butler, and Xavier to improve her record to 17-0 in Auriemma's absence.

But while the Huskies were winning in January mental and physical fatigue were setting in. After a Feb. 1 win at Providence, Auriemma said it would be tough for his team to improve down the stretch as its history would indicate it would because of its lack of depth.

Four days later, the Huskies thrilled a sellout crowd at the XL Center by taking an 11-point lead against No. 1 South Carolina. The Gamecocks tied it at halftime and took a lead in the fourth quarter before holding off a late Huskies' charge for an 81-77 victory that ended UConn's 14-game winning streak. The loss took its toll mentally and physically and sapped the Huskies' energy. Three days later, they lost at Marquette 59-52 marking the first time they had lost consecutive games since March 7 and 17 of 1993.

"I asked the players this the other day," Auriemma said. "I asked them, 'How many times this year have I been really angry?' Hardly at all, almost never. You watch them play over the course of the year, what is there to be angry about? They play their butts off. They listen and try to do everything you say. They screw it up as much as any team I have had and they get it right sometimes. But we're facing an uphill battle almost every day and they haven't complained."

His faith was rewarded the next week when Ducharme rallied UConn from an 11-point fourth-deficit to a win over Creighton followed by a crucial conference win at Villanova. Though the Huskies stumbled at home against St. John's, their Senior Night win over Xavier gave them the outright regular-season championship.

Fudd's return for the Big East tournament at Mohegan Sun Arena energized UConn. Though she was rusty, Edwards, Lopez Sénéchal, and Juhász were sharp and the Huskies rolled to a school-record 10th straight conference tournament title.

Given the No. 2 seed in the Seattle 1 Regional, UConn coasted past Vermont in the first round and with a raucous student section at Gampel Pavilion providing inspiration pulled away in the second half to oust Baylor and return to the Sweet 16. The Huskies then got off to a strong start against Ohio State, but the Buckeyes' pressure defense overwhelmed UConn for a seven-minute stretch and a 17-0 run turned an eight-point lead into a nine-point deficit and the Huskies didn't recover. The Buckeyes closed it out to reach the regional finals for the first time since 1993.

"We had a love for each other and we wanted to do it for each other and that's why it hurts so much more," Fudd said. "This was our last game with Dorka and Lou. To have it end at this point just hurts."

Lopez Sénéchal was an honorable mention Associated Press All-American and an all-Big East first-team pick in her one season at UConn after transferring from Fairfield. She was named to the Big East and Seattle 1 Regional all-tournament teams. On Monday, she was selected by the Dallas Wings with the fifth overall pick in the WNBA Draft.

Juhász was named to the all-Big East second team and to the conference all-tournament team. She was taken in the second round (16th overall) of the WNBA Draft by the Minnesota Lynx.

Edwards was named a third-team All-American by the AP and USBWA. An inconsistent February and a tough outing against Ohio State likely cost her WBCA All-America honors. She was the Most Outstanding Player of the Big East tournament, the Big East's Most Improved Player and first-team pick.

Mühl had the most remarkable season of them all. The junior point guard smashed Sue Bird's 21-year-old single-season records in assists (284) and average assists (7.9), while breaking Bueckers' single-game mark with 15 against North Carolina State. Her 12 double-figure assist games are school single-season and career records. She was an AP honorable mention All-American, the Big East Defensive Player of the Year for the second straight season and an all-conference second-team choice.

But that's all now history. As of today, UConn will have 14 players on its 2023-24 roster.. The most important thing for the Huskies is to get and stay healthy, starting with Bueckers and Brady and moving on to Fudd, Ducharme and Griffin.

The newcomers will be center Jana El Alfy, who enrolled at UConn for the spring semester to get a head start on school and basketball, and McDonald's All-American guards KK Arnold and Ashlynn Shade. Of course, also watch the transfer portal.

The 2024 Final Four is scheduled for Cleveland.

For coverage of all sports in the JI's 18-town coverage area, plus updates on the UConn women's basketball team and head coach Geno Auriemma, follow Carl Adamec on Twitter: @CarlAdamec, Facebook: Carl Adamec, and Instagram: @CarlAdamec.