Huskies still waiting to hear from NCAA on Westbrook

PHILADELPHIA — UConn coach Geno Auriemma ideally would like to know now whether he’ll be able to rely on Evina Westbrook this season.

The reality, though, is that he’ll need to wait a bit longer to find out.

The school has applied for a waiver for Westbrook to play right away, but Auriemma said Monday at American Athletic Conference media day that he still doesn’t have an update on the junior guard.

In the meantime, Westbrook is recovering from microfracture surgery on her left knee. She underwent the procedure on June 4 and has said that she expects to be ready for the start of the season.

That is, of course, assuming the NCAA rules her eligible.

“She’s only been able to go limited in practice,” Auriemma said. “So it’s almost like, not only do we not know whether you’re going to be able to play, but we also don’t know if you can go a full practice yet. Both of those things have to be resolved: getting healthy and being able to go through a whole practice.”

Westbrook, a 6foot guard, averaged 14.9 points and 5.3 assists last year (both teamhighs) as a sophomore. She transferred to UConn in May after Holly Warlick was fired as Tennessee’s coach and will have two seasons of eligibility remaining.

What’s difficult for UConn is that the NCAA hasn’t shown any consistency in its ruling on transfers, and there’s no definitive timetable for when they’ll receive an answer.

That, of course, has complicated matters somewhat in practice.

“It’s a little bit frustrating because you can’t really get after her as much as you would want to,” Auriemma said. “So, we’re putting her out there, putting her in all these situations, and then if we don’t have her it’s at the expense of somebody else that probably needs it. There’s a lot of, ‘How do we do this? How do we handle it?’ We can’t just keep her on the sideline, assuming she’s not going to play. And we can’t throw her in there and let her run the operation, and then she can’t play. We’re constantly jockeying back and forth.”

Auriemma is waiting. So, too, is junior forward Megan Walker, who’s one of Westbrook’s closest friends on the team.

“She’s going through a lot right now. We’re talking to her, keeping her in good spirits,” Walker said.

⏩ See you down the road?: UConn will be back in the Big East next season, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the Huskies will be done playing schools from the AAC.

South Florida coach Jose Fernandez said he hopes to continue scheduling the Huskies beyond this season. At this point, it seems to be a matter of when, not if, the teams will do so.

“That’s the plan,” Fernandez said. “Geno and I have a nice friendship, and we’ve played each other so much in the American, in Big East play, and even before we went into the Big East we had a homeandhome. So, that’s the plan.”

At the moment, nothing has been finalized. The Huskies will go from 18 to 20 league games next season, which Fernandez said makes things a bit more tricky.

“Next year’s going to be tough just because their nonconference is pretty set, but hopefully after that,” Fernandez said.

USF has been the most credible competitor to UConn during AAC play. The schools played four straight years (201518) in the conference title game, with the Huskies obviously winning all four. UConn is 290 alltime against the Bulls.

“We’re definitely going to miss them,” Fernandez said. “If anyone would say that it doesn’t hurt, them leaving, they’re crazy. From a competition standpoint and the history of their program, the players that they have and Geno … the credibility of them having them in your league helps so much.”

The Huskies are scheduled to visit USF on Feb. 16 and will host them on Senior Night on March 2 in Hartford.