The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Juhasz following her mother’s legacy
Balazs Juhasz played exhibition against UConn in 1993
STORRS — UConn women’s basketball forward Dorka Juhasz plays college home games where her mother, Hajnalka Balazs, once played as a professional — at Gampel Pavilion.
“My professional team and I played an exhibition game against Connecticut in Storrs,” Balazs wrote in an email, recalling a game that took place on Nov. 17, 1993. “It was an unforgettable experience, and it is even more special to me that my daughter got a chance to be playing for UConn and coach Geno Auriemma.”
Balazs, 30 at the time and a well-established player in Hungary, scored seven points in 20 minutes off the bench for a team that lost to the Huskies 97-75. She was a professional player for 25 years, retiring only when she became pregnant with Dorka. She was also a longtime member of the Hungarian senior national team, playing 125 games.
Juhasz’s basketball dreams include representing Hungary at the highest level and following her mother’s footsteps onto the international stage, and she will undoubtedly have that opportunity in the coming years.
Her more immediate goal is to work any way she can, despite lacking functional basketball use of her left arm this summer, toward helping the Huskies hang a 12th national championship banner from the Gampel rafters.
Juhasz, 6-foot-5, suffered a dislocated and broken wrist one step shy of UConn’s latest appearance in the Final Four, which would have been her first, and she watched two games from the bench in Minneapolis just days after undergoing surgery. The Huskies defeated Stanford in a semifinal and lost the championship game to South Carolina, which had glaring advantages in
post size and toughness.
“Obviously, we missed Dorka big-time in that final game,” Auriemma said Thursday at the Werth Champions Center. “That would have been great. But I’m not sure it would have made all the difference in the world, the way it played out. I think Dorka is going to have the kind of season where I’d be shocked if she wasn’t one of the top five or six players picked in the (WNBA) draft next year.”
Juhasz’s preparation for 2022-23 is complicated due to the long recovery needed for her wrist. But the irony of her current reality is that the major injury she sustained March 28 in the Elite Eight against NC State, no matter how scary and inconvenient, might ultimately allow her to achieve a basketball efficiency previously inaccessible due to the nagging injuries that disrupted her debut season at UConn.
“Dorka is another one, conditioning-wise, we have to make sure she can go 30 minutes,” Auriemma said. “But more important, go five, six, seven minutes in a row and not have three great minutes and then start to dip a little bit. Last year, when she was good, she was amazing. But then when the fatigue factor came in, it really affected her. We’re going to try to make sure that this year, that stays at the same level the entire time (she’s) out on the floor. She looks great.”
Juhasz is about two months into rehabilitation, which includes basic rangeof-motion exercises. She won’t be fully cleared for basketball activities until August.
But …
“My legs are working,” she said. “I can run.”
Juhasz was the last of three UConn players to meet the media Thursday, arriving in the facility’s lobby after a long delay with the shine of a recent workout.
She recognizes that she tended to wear down last season. She knows she needs to be stronger next season — cardiovascularly, and in the lower body — to help UConn with the scoring and defense and rebounding needed in the lane. Every moment of her offseason has been, and will continue to be, about working on what her body will allow her to, which, conveniently, means being able to work in areas where she previously came up short.
Last year, Juhasz was slowed and sidelined by a pulled quad muscle in the offseason and preseason, and by a foot injury during the season, setbacks that halted growth in strength and stamina.
Juhasz, a grad student, and Aaliyah Edwards, a junior, take a lot of opportunity and responsibility to the court as UConn’s primary post players.
“We know how much we have to step up next year to be able to win those crucial battles under the basket,” Juhasz said.
UConn lost those battles to South Carolina on April 3. Juhasz’s season had ended six days earlier. It was near 2 a.m. in her hometown of Pecs, Hungary, where her mother was watching live.
“It is challenging to consistently stay up until that late, but Hajnalka does not want to miss any games so Dorka can feel her support from afar,” said Juhasz’s father, Dr. Zsolt Juhasz, a pediatric surgeon. “Seeing Dorka going down through the screen was a nightmare, and she got very scared. We have seen her roll an ankle or get hit in the mouth by an opponent multiple times, but this injury was terrifying.
“I talked to Dorka the next morning because I was working in the hospital that night. Dorka is a hard worker, and she is going to do everything in her power to come back stronger from this terrible injury, and we have no doubt she will do that. Her desire to play at the Final Four and win the national championship in her last season is pushing her through the most challenging times.”
Final Four. The usual destination. Thirteen in a row now for UConn. The Huskies have reached college basketball’s last stop every year since Juhasz was just an adolescent in Hungary, interested mostly in sport — but much more.
“Her favorite hobbies were baking and painting,” Zsolt Juhasz said. “She loved baking cookies and cakes and she would always try to surprise us with different shapes of birthday cakes. She has always been creative, but her love for painting must have come from her grandfather who always enjoyed drawing and painting in his free time. Dorka also showed love and empathy for animals, especially dogs, so it is not surprising to see her around Jonathan a lot.”
Juhasz last season averaged 7.3 points, 5.7 rebounds and 19.8 minutes. Edwards averaged 7.9 points, 5.1 rebounds and 24.9 minutes. Olivia Nelson-Ododa, now departed, averaged 9.2 points, 7.5 rebounds and 27.2 minutes.
UConn expects to be a more dangerous perimeter team, led on that front by junior Paige Bueckers, sophomore Azzi Fudd and, perhaps, grad transfer Lou Lopez Senechal. If they don’t quite have the height and muscle to match up down low with, say, South Carolina, there’s a good chance the Huskies can stretch an opponent’s defense and/or shoot over it.
Still, there’s a minimum for what teams need near the basket with their biggest players.
“We have to be able to do two things better than we did last year,” Auriemma said. “We have to score more in the lane and we have to defend better in the lane. And I think Dorka can be that person. And so does Aaliyah need to be. The two of them, we have to be more consistent, getting points on the board, in the lane, getting the other team’s big guys in foul trouble and staying out of foul trouble and being good defenders in the lane.”
Juhasz, who earned her bachelor’s degree in three years at Ohio State and has already completed a master’s program at UConn, aims to eventually become a sports psychologist. First, she wants to return to the Final Four — and actually play. She wants to make the WNBA, too. And perhaps as much as anything else, she wants to represent her country as a senior national team member.
Just like her mom. “Seeing Dorka playing the sport I love dearly is so special,” Balazs said. “(I’m proud) of Dorka for being successful and chasing her dreams because I know how much hard work it takes to win and achieve those goals.”
Balazs was a three-time Hungarian League champion and the country’s player of the year in 1996. She helped Hungary’s senior national team to a thirdplace finish at the 1991 European Championship in Israel.
She also played that one game at Gampel against a Huskies team that started Rebecca Lobo, Jamelle Elliott, Jen Rizzotti, Pam Webber and Tonya Boone. UConn (30-3) would reach the Elite Eight that season, losing to eventual champion North Carolina, a year before going 35-0 for the program’s first national title.
Dorka Juhasz has played every level of basketball with Hungarian national teams but has not yet been able to compete with the senior national team due to conflicts with her commitments to school and basketball in the U.S.
“She always told us she wants to continue the legacy her mother built during her career, and that she will wear the same number (14),” Zsolt Juhasz said. “Her goals have not changed. … She is looking forward to representing her home country at FIBA events in the future. We cannot wait to see her fulfill her childhood dream when the time comes.”
Juhasz has an older brother, Gergely, who lives in Budapest and works as a computer engineer for an American company. She expects to be able to return home for a stretch of July.
“Overall, we would say she had a great experience at Ohio State, she built great relationships and she gained new experiences and knowledge of the world,” her father said. “However, we knew that her goal is to become the best version of herself on the basketball court and compete in national championships, so she felt like she needed a change of environment.”
Juhasz received hundreds of cards of encouragement from fans after her injury.
“We were very happy and grateful to see how welcoming everyone at UConn was when she first arrived,” Zsolt Juhasz said. “She loved everything about the team and coaches, so we knew she is going to have a great experience in Storrs, too. Working with one of the greatest women’s basketball coaches in history and practicing with great players every single day is something that Dorka always dreamed of. Seeing her enjoying it and embracing all the challenging parts of being a Husky is really making us happy and proud. She found everything she always wanted at UConn, and she wants to win a national championship in her last collegiate year.”
Dorka Juhasz has an idea for what that might require. She watched from the bench as UConn was overwhelmed by South Carolina’s post players in the national championship game.
“Obviously, Aliyah Boston, she’s amazing,” she said. “But not even just the bigs, that whole team was just so aggressive. On the offensive boards, I remember (South Carolina) just attacking the boards every single time, giving them second chances. … We just have to get that kind of aggression to be able to get every single offensive rebound, box out every possession. I remember the first five minutes, just how they came in with so much confidence and strength.”