Wait and hope
Doctors offer insight into Bueckers’ injury
On the day after Paige Bueckers collapsed in pain on the floor of Gampel Pavilion, UConn fans waited for a prognosis.
But Monday came and went without word on Bueckers’ status.
In the final moments of a victory over Notre Dame Sunday, Bueckers suffered a left knee injury prior to falling in front of the UConn bench. UConn coach Geno Auriemma said after the game that Bueckers would undergo an MRI when the swelling subsided Monday.
Auriemma also speculated the injury was a hyperextension in Bueckers’ left knee and that doctors initial examination indicated the sophomore didn’t twist any ligaments.
Bueckers, the reigning national player of the year, is averaging 21.2 points, 5.5 rebounds and 6.2 assists in 36.3 minutes per game in the Huskies’ first six matchups this season. The sophomore has been UConn’s best player, so the team’s fate will be impacted by her injury.
What is a hyperextension of the knee?
“Hyperextension is essentially when her leg reaches all the way straight and goes a little bit further than it should,” Dr. Jordan Gruskay, an orthopedic sports medicine surgeon at the Connecticut Orthopedic Institute, told Hearst Connecticut Media Monday. “It looks like she hyperextended her knee when it looked like she slipped on her own shoe. She stubbed it and then hyperextended her left knee.
“Usually the things we’re worried about when someone hyperextends their knee is, 1. you can have an ACL tear, certainly possible. It’s a little more atypical of a way to tear an ACL … and probably the second one, that would be the most common, would be a bone bruise from hyperextending.”
Gruskay, a resident pool member of the medical staff for the U.S. ski
team, said that based on watching the video of Bueckers’ fall that if she were to have suffered a bone bruise it would be from her tibia bone hitting her femur bone during the hyperextension of her knee.
He said if it was a bone bruise the recovery process would take two to four weeks and require a period of decreased and non-weight activities on the knee.
That may be the best case scenario for the injury, given prognosis by Auriemma after the game and deafening silence that fell over the crowd as Bueckers lay on the ground in front of UConn’s bench Sunday afternoon.
Dr. Sabrina Strickland, a sports medicine surgeon at Hospital for Special Surgery in New York and Stamford, however, did not rule out the possibility of Bueckers suffering an ACL tear after watching the play.
“That’s typically what happens most of the time, it’s non-contact,” Dr. Strickland said. “Usually it’s more that the knee falls into a knock-kneed type of position and then essentially the forces are just too great for the ACL.”
If it is an ACL tear, it’s likely Buckers is looking at a six to nine month recovery, including surgery — which would take her out for the remainder of the season. Strickland said with ACL recoveries, doctors will usually wait between two to six weeks until they perform the surgery to allow the patient to regain some initial movement in the knee and limit the risk of re-injury.
“The reason you wait is if you operate too quickly, they just have a higher risk of getting stiff,” Strickland said. “So, the only ones we typically operate on immediately are the ones who tore their meniscus in such a way that they can’t move their knee. … We wait until they essentially are able to do some PT (physical therapy) and get their full range of motion back.”
Strickland said ACL tears are also more common in women’s basketball than in men’s basketball.
“Typically, when you look at women’s basketball compared to men’s basketball the ACL rupture is somewhere around five to six times higher than that in men’s,” she said. “We’ve been trying to solve that mystery for 25 years but it’s a combination, we think, of just the anatomy; women’s ACL’s are a little bit smaller, the alignment of the leg is a little bit more knot-kneed. Potentially there is some hormonal influences. A lot of different factors. The way our muscles fire.”
UConn has seen players deal with ACL tears, including Shea Ralph, Sue Bird, Kalana Greene, and Caroline Doty.
While both doctors ruled out a possible Achilles injury — Bueckers wouldn’t have been able to get back up and continue dribbling — Gruskay wasn’t ruling out the possibility of a meniscus tear based on the video.
Different from an ACL tear — the ACL tears because of too much force — Dr. Gruskay said a meniscus tear could happen if the cartilage gets pinched between the tibia and femur bones during the hyperextension. He said these types of tears do “not necessarily” require surgery and would just be recovered through rehab in as little as three to four weeks. If it was a bad tear, however; he said it would need three to four months of recovery.
UConn is already without star freshman Azzi Fudd for at least another week due to an ongoing foot injury. The preseason Big East Freshman of the Year wore a boot on her right foot during UConn’s game at Seton Hall on Friday.
Also on UConn’s injured list is junior Aubrey Griffin. Griffin has yet to play this season due to ongoing ankle and back injuries.
Bueckers’ injury occurred with 38.5 seconds left against Notre Dame, when she dribbled up court and her left leg appeared to buckle out from under her in the middle of a jab-step. She fell to her hands and quickly got up before grabbing a hold of the ball. However, she was only able to take a handful of steps before collapsing near the bench.
In front of an eerily silent crowd, last year’s national player of the year laid on the floor in visible pain with her team surrounding her. Eventually two of her teammates, Evina Westbrook and Amari DeBerry, carried her to the bench. She was looked at by trainers as the game ended.
Fudd and a UConn trainer helped assist Bueckers off the bench, through the handshake line with Notre Dame, and into the locker room as Bueckers struggled to put weight on her left leg.
Auriemma was asked why Bueckers was still in the game in the final minute with UConn comfortably ahead.
“She never comes out,” Auriemma said. “She never wants to come out. She’s a pain in the [butt] to have on the bench because all she does is complain about why she’s not playing. And we’ve made a concerted effort the last three or four games to get her some rest during the game.
“And you’re right, I don’t have an answer for why she was in the game. I mean, that could happen any time. It could happen in practice. It could happen in a game. But, yeah, I don’t like our team without her on the court. I mean, I might have to like it if she misses any time, but I don’t like the way our team looks when she’s not on the floor.”