STORRS — UConn women’s basketball coach Geno Auriemma shrugged and shook her head before exhaling forcefully through flapping lips, summing up a feeling of a little helplessness under the clouds gathering without warning in the Gampel Pavilion . He also chuckled at one point. Nothing funny, just the sarcastic type of laughter that comes when the situation is out of your control.
“What can I say?” he asked rhetorically.
Auriemma sat in a front row seat over one of the baselines, not far from where she gleefully spoke a few weeks ago about UConn regaining its reputation as the basketball capital of the world.
His team was on a cruise in early December, and his best player, Azzi Fudd, looked like a candidate for Player of the Year. The men’s team, meanwhile, appeared to be freed from the protracted struggle that last hired Dan Hurley, as they surged to No. 2 nationally with an undefeated record.
But the holiday season and New Years weren’t so kind to either UConn team. The Auriemma women’s team has been hit again by a wave of injuries the team is unprepared for and hopes to avoid, and the Harley men are now going full steam ahead in what was once a joyful season. increase.
Through this hairpin turn, out of such ease and prosperity, the Huskies met their own quagmire. increase. After his 14-0 start on the men’s side, he lost five in six games and the team looked lost on all counts.
No matter how successful the season is, you never know what will happen anytime soon.
“That’s one of the things you learn when you’ve been in this business long enough,” said 38-year-old Auriemma.th Season at UConn. “You learn. Whatever you have, you have to be willing to move on. It’s almost like golf. If you can, play five days a week and stay the same all five days.” I think I’m swinging, but the ball goes in five different directions and I don’t understand why.What I have today.This is like, ‘What’s on today? Who’s practicing today? What do we need to accomplish? Who can play tomorrow’s game? How can we win tomorrow’s game?”
The women scored a 79-39 win over Butler in Gumpel on Saturday afternoon, extending the Huskies’ winning streak to 10. After his mother passed away, this was an incredible trying leg.
As Auriemma said on Saturday, the men’s team was across the street at the Worth Champions Center, where Hurley was leading the first practice after being absent most of the week with COVID-19. The Huskies came out of a devastating 67-66 loss at Seton Hall as Hurley watched from his home, with the team leading all but eight seconds in the game. UConn ended his three-game losing streak on Sunday, as he won 86-56 over lower-ranked Butler but had already fallen to his 15th spot in the nation.
And then the situation became very unpleasant.
“I feel like I can’t win the game anymore,” Hurley said at the post-match press conference. The guys were beaten up and it was a little scary to go there and see what the collective group looked like and their energy levels.
The men’s team was bogged down in their most proud areas of defense and toughness, not to mention some significant limitations on the offense, before overwhelming Butler on Sunday. UConn was exposed in various ways at Seton Hall late Wednesday night, this time under the watchful eye of assistants Luke Murray and Tom Moore. Associate Head His coach Kimani Young also missed the game due to COVID.
“I think when we take this thing back to where we were on the verge of being the number one team in the country and where we had to settle for two, there’s a certain amount of pressure that comes with that,” Harley said. . “And even at that level, the mentality that it is better to keep getting better. bottom.
Men and women feel better today about what happened over the weekend. Yet, six weeks into the postseason, one team continues to deal with the uncontrollable, while the other shows how prone they are to falling apart tactically and emotionally. It’s not what it should be. This was not the case.
As November turns to December following both teams’ wins at the Phil Knight event in Oregon, the women take to the traditional track and the men to the realistic national championship ambitions that originally existed. There have been all sorts of talks of it being brought back. of so many seasons.
now? Wow. Something strange took hold.
Junior forward Aaliyah Edwards said, “It feels like you’re riding a wave of uphill, incline, but when you hit something, it just goes down again.”
One of the questions posed to Edwards on Friday was whether UConn’s two injured stars, Paige Bookers and Fudd, were better coaches. Either way, Bookers this season and Fudd for the time being can only advise and support their teammates.
“I’m grateful to have two generational players,” said Auriemma.
Bueckers and Fudd have only played the same game 15 times (out of 55).
The men will host #1 Xavier Wednesday at the Gumpel Pavilion, have an off next weekend, and the schedule softens a bit from there. Big East’s slate teeth chewed them up, and periods of vulnerability gave way to periods of invulnerability.
“I think most of us were confident because we knew what we had done before,” said forward Alex Caravan. “I think most of us still had it. And it’s really starting to show up now.”
Hurley has not publicly evaluated his team since Jan. 15 after a disastrous loss to St. John’s on Sunday. He chose not to meet with the media on Saturday before the Butler game, which is unusual.
Auriemma is in a good mood and looks and sounds more like her usual self than before. He spoke for nearly half an hour on Friday and even danced on the sidelines during Sunday’s moment of victory.
The death of her mother on December 8th left Auriemma in a dark place. He returned from his two breaks to try to argue the pre-departure issue, one that is not easy to handle no matter how long it has been around.
When we spoke Friday, Fudd was on the edge of the court, on crutches and wearing knee braces. At the other end, Caroline Ducharme was sitting alone on the bench, looking pretty sad as her practice warm-up was underway.Ducharme will be absent due to concussion protocol. do. A timeline for Fudd’s recovery has not been provided, but Auriema said her first step is to avoid putting weight on her injured knee for two weeks.
“More precautions are taken to prevent injuries than ever before in the history of college basketball,” Auriema said. “Fifteen, twenty years ago, nothing like this was happening. They can tell you how to jump, how to land, etc. They have data that you can imagine. …We are doing more for our players than ever before in the history of gaming.So how do you explain that?”
Another rhetorical question.
Then the topic moved to other sports. Football and Auriemma’s beloved Eagles. And baseball — all these Tommy John surgeries in recent years to repair torn ligaments. . They hit more complete games in one season than most pitchers today finish their careers.
“But they didn’t train the way they train,” Auriemma said. All this Gatorade.All these supplements.Electrolytes…”
“Give me a bad light,” he joked. “Maybe all the day-to-day stuff you have is counterproductive. They didn’t have a dedicated gym to work out every day.
The men’s team was bound to finally feel the gravitas of college basketball—the Big East is the bear. And nationally, the ranked teams are doing it roughly these days. But at the end of the last week of work, Harley was able to walk away pretty satisfied with a step back in the right direction.
“We know we’re not bad,” Hurley said. “We know we are really good. ”
