The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
BREAKING BAD
How coach Geno Auriemma views rise of injuries across country
STORRS — Geno Auriemma already wasn’t feeling well, so much so he remained at the team hotel as his No. 8-ranked UConn women’s basketball team won games at Butler and at Xavier under the guidance of associate head coach Chris Dailey the first week of 2023.
It got no better when he returned to his office at the Werth Champions Center. Auriemma had already planned to take a break to recuperate when he learned that injuries to Ayanna Patterson and Aaliyah Edwards had left the Huskies with six healthy players. With Big East rules mandating a team must have a minimum seven scholarship players available, UConn’s game with DePaul that was to be played Jan. 8, 2023 was postponed.
“If you don’t have enough players, the game is not played,” Auriemma said on Saturday. “That happened to us with the DePaul game last year and it was rescheduled. We had every intention of playing the game at some point.”
The game was played on Jan. 23, 2023, with the Huskies beating the Blue Demons 94-51.
Injuries have hit women’s college basketball hard around the country in 2023-24. UConn, itself, started with 14 players. Four — freshman Jana El Alfy (Achilles’ tendon), sophomore Patterson (knee), junior Azzi Fudd (knee), and graduate student Aubrey Griffin (knee) — had season-ending injuries and surgery. A fifth — junior Caroline Ducharme — has not played since November due to neck spasms. Ducharme, who was spotted at Gampel Pavilion with her teammates prior to Saturday’s 88-51 win over DePaul, has had head and neck issues in the past and Auriemma said after the victory an update on her status for the season could come in the next week.
But the situation has not become as dire as what has happened at TCU. The Big 12 school forfeited last week’s games with Kansas State and Iowa State with the program saying on X (formerly Twitter) that the games were canceled “due to injuries within the program and in the interest of the health and safety of our student-athletes.”
Per Big 12 rules, the games will
“It’s such an unfortunate situation. If you look around the country, people are scratching their heads trying to figure things out and how this is happening. We’re just in a bad cycle in the country right now.” Geno Auriemma
count as losses on the Horned Frogs’ conference record but not on their overall record leaving TCU at 14-4 overall and 1-6 in the Big 12.
“I saw that, and that’s crazy,” Auriemma said. “I don’t know their roster and how many they started with. They have how many out? Six? That’s a lot. That’s a lot, trust me, I know. I know the feeling.
“But it’s such an unfortunate situation. If you look around the country, people are scratching their heads trying to figure things out and how this is happening. I’ve talked to a lot of doctors and a lot of surgeons and they’ll you that the probability in women’s sports for injuries is way higher than in men’s sports. We’re just in a bad cycle in the country right now.”
TCU, under first-year coach Mark Campbell, has 14 players listed on its roster. Two — Paige Bradley and Knisha Godfrey — have not played a game due to injuries. Injured forward Bre’Yon White has not played since Dec. 1. Center Sedona Prince has been sidelined for four games with a broken finger and remains out indefinitely. Then last week the school announced that guard Jaden Owens (right knee) and forward DaiJa Turner (left ankle) would have season-ending surgery. Of the remaining eight players, four average 11.5 minutes or fewer per game.
The Big 12 does not have a rule like the Big East concerning minimum number of players available in order to play a game.
It’s so bad that TCU held open tryouts for fulltime students Thursday and Friday. On Sunday, the school announced that Sarah Sylvester, a 6-foot-3 sophomore and member of the Horned Frogs’ volleyball team, had accepted a preferred walk-on invitation to play basketball for the remainder of the season. The native of Livonia, Michigan, was an all-conference basketball player in high school and is a middle blocker for the TCU volleyball team. She becomes the first TCU student-athlete in the Big 12 era to play varsity basketball and volleyball.
On Monday, TCU added three preferred walk-on guards. Piper Davis helped Timberline High to a Idaho state championship two years ago. Her father, Jerrod, played at Gonzaga. Ella Hamlin scored 1,500 points in her fouryear career at Granbury High in Texas. Mekhayia Moore led Brownsboro High to a state championship in Texas in 2022 and was a 1,000-point scorer. She was also the salutatorian of her high school graduating class.
“You never want to see a student-athlete go down due to injury or miss games due to injury,” UConn’s Edwards said Saturday about the rash of injuries nationwide. “It’s not an easy thing to overcome let alone go through.
“For sure, I think just being grateful and blessed that the situation I am in personally or my teammates are in be more appreciative of the game and of the quality time we spend with each other. You never know when it can be taken away from you in a split second. I’m always just showing love from a distance and definitely praying for them and wishing they have a speedy recovery and not wishing anybody on other teams any injuries.”
Last week, Kansas State announced All-American center Ayoka Lee would miss four weeks following ankle surgery. On Friday, Stanford All-American forward Cameron Brink injured her left knee in a collision with an Oregon player early in the Cardinal’s game at Maples Pavilion. She was listed as a game-time decision for Sunday’s game against Oregon State but did not play. For UConn, it’s the third straight season it has been plagued with injuries. The only other time in Auriemma’s career the Huskies have suffered four seasonending injuries was in 2000-01.
“What we have found as the No. 1 predictor is previous injuries that you came here with,” Auriemma said. “I don’t know how it is at other places. But except for Jana, every one has had a previous injury that they came here. Is it overuse at a young age? Is it they only play that sport since they’re young? Is it some kids start a weight training program too early? I don’t know. I don’t know.”
Auriemma has not been one to back off a recruit due to injuries in high school including ACL injuries to Fudd, Ducharme, and Griffin. Four-time national champion Morgan Tuck and three-time national champions Caroline Doty and Ashley Valley also had ACL injuries in high school.
Would Auriemma change his attitude towards bringing in players with some type of injury history?
“If it’s prevalent as it appears to be at a young age, you might not have anyone to recruit if you eliminate the kids who have had some kind of injury,” Auriemma said. “I don’t know. I’d like to think what’s happening at the high school level is having a big, big effect on what’s happening in college. The odds are high and there’s no getting around it.”
The Huskies (16-3, 8-0 Big East) return to action Tuesday at Marquette. UConn has won 12 straight and leads the conference race by 21⁄2 games over Creighton, St. John’s, and Villanova.
TCU’s next scheduled game is Tuesday against Big 12 foe UCF in Fort Worth.