Back after back
Huskies happy for Griffin’s return to team after surgery
It was hard for Audrey Griffin to watch her daughter Aubrey play basketball last season with so much pain. The pain only escalated for the UConn women’s basketball player.
By last Christmas, her daughter could hardly walk without feeling pain in her back.
That’s why she couldn’t help but smile when about two weeks after having back surgery in mid-January, Aubrey managed to walk down their stairs for the first time on a cane.
“Oh look who’s coming down the stairs,” Audrey remembers saying before her and Aubrey both started laughing. “Look who’s moving and shaking.”
Aubrey Griffin didn’t get a chance to play this season before being sidelined with injury. An early season ankle sprain in practice aggravated a back injury she suffered last season. Griffin had seasonending surgery in January.
While the junior continues to sit out this year, she’s recently returned to UConn’s campus and rejoined the team on the sideline. Her presence among her teammates not only brightened her recovery but has helped motivate the team as it prepares to play in this weekend’s Sweet 16 (Saturday at 2 p.m. against No. 3 Indiana at Total Mortgage Arena in Bridgeport).
“Aubrey coming back just brings a sense of happiness for everyone,” senior Evina Westbrook said. “And obviously she can't be on the court with us, but her presence in itself is — it's felt throughout everyone. I think that speaks volumes with how close we are with this team and what Aubrey means to us.
“We pray for her every game. So just to have her here, especially in this tournament, the one that you work all season for, means a lot to us that she was able to come back.”
After injuring her ankle in the preseason, the 6foot-1 forward from Ossining, N.Y. could no longer sit through the pain in her back. She had initially injured it sometime last season but continued to
UCONN vs. INDIANA at Bridgeport Saturday, 2 p.m. (ESPN)
play during UConn’s run to the Final Four.
Griffin, who averaged 6.4 points and 5.4 rebounds in 32 games as a freshman, appeared in 29 games — including five starts — last season. She averaged 6.2 points and 4.8 rebounds.
She played just six minutes in UConn’s Final Four loss to Arizona. By the fall, she was working with trainers during physical therapy and rehab to lessen the pain.
But nothing worked. She could barely walk when she went home for winter break, her mom says.
It was at that point doctors told Aubrey she needed surgery and that she would have to sit out the rest of the season.
“We were disappointed of course and she was disappointed, but we had tried everything at that point so just trying to look at it on more of a positive side to where she wouldn’t be in pain anymore,” Audrey said.
Aubrey underwent a discectomy on Jan. 10. She spent the next two weeks in bed recovering. Her days were mundane. She was only allowed to get up to use the restroom or shower. She focused on schoolwork and watched UConn games on TV.
The last time Aubrey sat out for an extended period of time due to an injury was her sophomore season in high school, after tearing her ACL. She spent 12 months recovering, rehabbing and regaining strength in her knee. By the time she returned to the court, it was as if she was a whole new player, her former coach Dan Ricci said.
“When she tore her ACL in high school, she never missed a practice,” Ricci said. “She’d sit there and dribble the ball on the floor on the wall. When she could stand on one foot, she’d shoot free throws. …
“I’ve coached 31 years. I’ve had a lot of kids with torn ACLs. And they come back, and you can see they’re tentative at first, they limp, this and that. When she came back, she waited a whole 12 months, she rehabbed her butt off, she had no brace, no nothing, and you would never even think that she had a torn ACL by the way she played right away as soon as she came back.”
Watching the Huskies continue to get hit with injury after injury — eight of UConn’s 12 total players sat out at least two games due an injury or illness — and face a mountain of adversity this year was hard for Aubrey.
She wanted to be out there with them. She wanted to play. She wanted to help.
Her parents did what they could to keep her grounded and positive as she continued to recover and heal.
“We’ve kinda been through this before and one of the things I tried her keep encouraged about was, ‘Hey, we had to do this for a longer period of time the last time. … This is only going to be a couple of months. We can do that,’ ” her mom Audrey said.
When Aubrey was able to walk down the stairs, the mom and daughter would watch UConn’s games on the TV on the family couch with Aubrey propped up by pillows.
“She could have gotten down and just out about it and then depressed and she chose to look at the brighter side of things and to look forward to what she can do moving forward. So now she’ll be able to do the thing that she loves without the pain and that’s going to be worth it,” Audrey added.
Aubrey was able to see the team on Jan. 23 in Queens when the Huskies faced St. John’s. She joined the team during the warm up shoot around, standing to the side with the help of a cane and hugging her coaches whom she hadn’t seen since before the surgery. The team staff even created a spot for her to lie down and watch the game since she wasn’t able to stand or sit for long periods of time.
“I told her that this is just another year that she can sit back and watch and observe and I think she’s done that,” said her dad Adrian Griffin, a former NBA player and a current assistant coach with the Toronto Raptors. “I think sitting back watching the season, you can clearly see that they miss her out there and what she brings to the table. … It was a beautiful thing just watching her teammates interacting with her, how much they miss her and value her and love her.”
When UConn won the Big East regular season title on Feb. 23, the team Photoshopped Aubrey into their team celebration pictures.
The following week, they FaceTimed her to help place the team’s name card in the winning spot on the Big East Tournament bracket.
Around that same time, Aubrey, her mom and older brother Alan made the trip up to Storrs to bring her back to campus. The two-plus hours sitting in the car caused a slight setback in her recovery but being back with her teammates in person helped brighten her spirits.
“Not being there with her teammates and not being able to play. It was hard. It was really hard for her,” Audrey, her mom, said. “It still is but at least she’s with her teammates now, so that’s been a huge boost for her to be encouraged to keep going.”
Aubrey wasn’t allowed to travel with the team to Mohegan for the Big East Tournament, but she’s been on the bench during the first two games of the NCAA Tournament. She even helps rebounding during shootaround.
She no longer needs a cane to walk and is working on her rehab and physical therapy with the team’s trainers.
“One thing that has significantly changed is how she walks,” Audrey said before laughing. “She is not in pain anymore! And it’s good to see your kid not in pain because that’s really hard to watch as a parent, and then her spirits have been lifted now that she’s around her teammates and getting back into working out — not working out, working out, but she’s doing PT with the trainer there. She’s definitely doing very well. So I’m happy for her.”
There isn’t an exact timeline yet for when Aubrey will return to basketball drills and workouts. A lot of her travel plans are day-to-day as to whether she’ll join the team in Bridgeport this weekend or in Minneapolis if UConn makes the Final Four.
But those around her know that when she does return, she’s going to be better than ever and no longer in any pain.
“I’m extremely proud of how she’s handled (it), like she hasn’t made any excuses. She has just been staying grounded. She has her days, but she’s a tough kid. She’s been through this before with her ACL, she bounced back and came back even stronger,” Adrian said.
“I think having a year off is going to allow her to grow, mature and have that, we always talk about it, that look in your eye when you know how good you are. Once she understands and figures out how good she is then the sky’s the limit.”