Injury-riddled TCU women on quite a ride

The TCU women’s team was on quite a roll in coach Mark Campbell’s first season, off to a school-record 14-0 start and in the AP Top 25 poll.

Only a couple of weeks later, after injuries sidelined 20-point scorers Sedona Prince and Madison Conner, and veteran point guard Jaden Owens, the Horned Frogs were having to forfeit two games and hold open tryouts on campus just to fill some roster spots.

“It just shows how quickly a season can turn,” Campbell said Tuesday night, after the Frogs played and won their first game in 10 days.

There were four new walk-on players on the roster from the more than 40 who attended tryouts last week, though only TCU volleyball player Sarah Sylvester appeared briefly in the 66-60 win over UCF.

“Just been decimated by the injury bug, you have open tryouts midyear, we haven’t played 5-on-5, and you show up and you get a Big 12 win,” Campbell said. “It’s been a special, hard two weeks.”

Prince, a 6-foot-7 graduate transfer from Oregon, broke the ring finger on her right hand in the opening seconds of TCU’S first game this calendar year, a matchup of undefeated Big 12 teams at Baylor. She still played the entire game, and finished with 20 points and 10 rebounds in the 7150 loss on Jan. 3.

Owens, a Baylor transfer who was the Big 12’s active leader in assists, suffered a torn ACL and meniscus in her right knee on Jan. 13, the Frogs’ fourth consecutive loss. Conner, a junior guard who came to TCU from Arizona, then injured her MCL in practice after the team returned home, and sophomore guard Daija Turner announced she had seasonending ankle surgery.

The Frogs were down to only six available scholarship players, with two of those on limited minutes coming off injuries, going into a scheduled home game against Top 10 team

Kansas State. Though the Wildcats were already in Fort Worth to play, TCU forfeited that game as well as one last Saturday at Iowa State. While those count as losses in the Big 12 standings, they aren’t reflected in TCU’S overall 15-4 record.

Women's notes

• Paige Bueckers overcame an injury scare to score 28 points and beat the halftime buzzer with a 3-point shot from about 40 feet away as No. 8 Uconn topped Marquette 85-59 late on Tuesday for its 13th consecutive victory.

Bueckers, the 2021 AP national player of the year who missed most of the last two seasons with knee injuries, left just three minutes into the game and was holding her left knee on the bench. But she returned less than 2½ minutes later and proceeded to shoot 11 of 18 overall (4 of 5 on 3s) for Uconn (17-3, 9-0).

• Top-ranked and undefeated South Carolina travels to play ninth-ranked and defending women’s national champion LSU tonight.

Men's highlights

• Riverside Poly grad Lamont Butler’s 23 points helped San Diego State defeat Wyoming 81-65. Butler had five rebounds and three steals for the Aztecs (16-4, 5-2 Mountain West Conference).

• The Southeastern Conference fined South Carolina $100,000 for its fans storming the court after its men’s team upset No. 6 Kentucky, 79-62.

• Centennial High grad Jared Mccain hit a key 3-pointer in the final minutes to help No. 12 Duke hold off Louisville, 83-69. Mccain, a freshman and one of only two players to start all 18 games for Duke (14-4, 5-2 ACC), had 10 points.

• Rancho Christian High grad Kevin Patton Jr. had 14 points and six rebounds to help the University of San Diego beat Portland, 85-81.

• DJ Davis, who prepped at Riverside Poly and Centennial, had 17 points as Butler defated Georgetown.