Loss of Bueckers presents chances for other Huskies
The issues that UConn had identified through the first four weeks of the season have nothing to do with Paige Bueckers and everything to do with those around her, so the “get right for March” winter projects remain the same for a team that has lacked polish even with its best player functioning at a high level.
Bueckers will be sidelined for up to two months, having sustained a tibial plateau fracture Sunday when she hyperextended her left knee in the closing seconds of a victory over Notre Dame. The injury is not only a bummer for America’s most celebrated player. It is a devastating blow to what the Huskies will be capable of and how they’ll look as 2021 turns to 2022.
But the immediate fallout is not the most pressing concern. At UConn, it’s mostly about the postseason. It is always about the postseason. The Huskies, if they’re going about business the right way, should turn complication into opportunity. Each player in the rotation must find some level of efficiency and consistency by embracing individual pressures they haven’t yet seemed to apply.
Sophomore forward Aaliyah Edwards needs to be better. She came out of an encouraging freshman season — and the offseason and Olympic experience —
as a shell of what her potential and her 2020-21 development track would suggest.
Azzi Fudd, with her foot injury soon to be reevaluated, must get healthy. And whenever she returns at full capacity she must prove to be more than a player who will change a game by making open 3-pointers.
Evina Westbrook, who helped carry Bueckers to the bench Sunday, must shoulder more of load. She and Christyn Williams must play like senior guards who have been through all that college basketball has to offer and have grown from it.
Nika Muhl, who will likely assume primary point guard responsibilities with help from Westbrook, must play with organization and precision to match the hockey fight-like defense she has always offered in bursts.
Olivia Nelson-Ododa and Dorka Juhasz have to be more than tall.
Caroline Ducharme has to prove worthy — for weeks instead of one check-in to the next — of test-drive minutes that will increase.
There has been so much talk about this team’s depth. “On paper,” coach Geno Auriemma has noted, adding that the Huskies have a lot of people and it remains to be seen how many good players.
We’ll see now, starting Wednesday at Georgia Tech and through the bulk of the Big East schedule, 15 games or so until Bueckers’ scheduled late-January or early-February return from her latest setback. There’s more value in squeezing everything a team can out of Bueckers’ absence than continually Googling “tibial plateau fracture” and wondering whether Bueckers can make it back for a rematch Jan. 27 at South Carolina.
That’s irrelevant. Bueckers, 20, needs to get healthy to the point where she can stay healthy, through this season and what figures to be a career lasting another 20 years.
She has given so much to basketball, and vice versa. It’s also a taxing relationship. She finished off her senior season at Hopkins High in Minnesota hobbling around campus
with a protective boot, sore down the stretch of the 2019-20 season — after which she was named Gatorade national player of the year — with what was described as a stress reaction (overuse, essentially).
Playing basketball year round at the highest level is like running through a car wash. You hope not to get caught up in something. Bueckers has. It’s been inevitable. She averaged 36.2 minutes as a freshman and averaging 36.3 this season.
Along the way in her national player of the year freshman season, she hurt her ankle in a January game at Tennessee, limping away only to return minutes later to make the clinching 3-pointer. After the season, on April 30, she had surgery on the same ankle to correct an osteochondral defect and spent four months rehabilitating. She was cleared for full basketball activity on schedule, in September, and returned this year as the focus of everything on the off the court.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful, as championship aspirations go, if Bueckers came back this time with, say, nine or 10 regular-season games remaining only to realize she didn’t have to take on so much of a day-in, day-out burden for
UConn to stand a chance against the type of teams it will have to defeat after the first weekend of the NCAA Tournament? Maybe she could play 30 minutes a game and not 35-40.
Bueckers dominated in the opener against No. 14 Arkansas, scoring a career-high 34 points in 40 minutes. She pushed the Huskies past South Florida in the Bahamas (21 points, seven assists, 38 minutes), with Fudd making six 3s. She owned the Notre Dame game, too, posting 22 points, five steals, four rebounds, four assists, playing all 39 minutes and 21 seconds until she was injured.
Auriemma said after the game that he left Bueckers in so long because he doesn’t like how the team looks without her, but, “I might have to like it if she misses any time.”
She’s going to miss time, a lot of time, and that’s never good. But UConn has just that on its hands, time, and the absence of the best player has to mean the improvement of the rest — not just to bridge the gap toward being whole again, but toward becoming a team that looks like it is ready to win the whole thing.
This hasn’t been the smartest team, Auriemma has said. It doesn’t look like the toughest. The offense hasn’t flowed right. But the Huskies are deep, they are talented, and they are capable of making the most out of the coming months. Bueckers sitting out isn’t the worst thing. She’s not missing a year. Her season and her career are not in jeopardy. True disaster avoided.
It would be a shame if the Huskies didn’t make something positive of this.
UConn’s only loss was Nov. 22 to South Carolina at the Battle 4 Atlantis. The Huskies shot 1 for 10 and were outscored 16-3 in the fourth quarter, with Bueckers going 0 for 5. She played 39 minutes. The main problem, Auriemma said a few days later, was this: “Everybody was standing around watching Paige try to win the game for us.”
That’s not an option now. If UConn is going to be the team it wants to be, it’s on others. As it has been. That work continues. It’s just under a microscope for at least the next six weeks. This should be a healthy experience for a team that is — and already was — a work in progress.