Connecticut coach Geno Auriemma may know higher than anybody that profitable a championship shouldn’t be at all times primarily based on talent alone.
There’s luck and ideal timing concerned.
Groups have to remain wholesome and be enjoying their finest basketball when it issues most.
Well being has not been a robust go well with for Connecticut (8-0) over the previous few seasons.
Paige Bueckers, the highest participant of the 2020 recruiting class, missed all the 2022-23 season rehabbing from a knee harm.
Azzi Fudd, the highest participant of the 2021 class, was sidelined for many of final season and the beginning of this one after struggling ACL and medial meniscal tears.
This season, in some methods, has been years within the making.
Lastly, Bueckers and Fudd have a clear invoice of well being on the similar time. Connecticut’s two stars can be part of forces and, maybe, lead the Huskies to their file twelfth championship and put an finish to Auriemma’s nine-year title drought — his longest since he gained his first in 1995.
No. 2 Connecticut entered Saturday’s Champions Basic as one in every of school basketball’s hottest groups.
However an harm scare within the third quarter of their 85-52 blowout win over No. 22 Louisville had many in Barclays Middle holding their breath.
Fudd obtained sandwiched between two Louisville gamers and collapsed to the ground. She instantly reached for her surgically repaired proper knee.
The ball remained in play, and Fudd finally mustered the power to rise up.
She gingerly made her approach to the left nook, the place she knocked in a 3 that put Connecticut up 63-26.
When a timeout was lastly known as, Fudd made her manner straight to the locker room.
“Obviously you don’t want to see that,” Bueckers mentioned. “But as a team, we had to really band together, weather the storm, not play too much into the emotions and try to just focus on the game, but definitely feel for her [in that moment].”
Fudd returned to the staff’s bench later within the third quarter and didn’t play one other second. By the fourth, although, she was seen standing and cheering on her teammates as they demolished Louisville.
After the win, Auriemma mentioned Fudd was strolling round and appeared “fine.”
“It didn’t look like worst case scenario,” Auriemma mentioned. “We were crossing our fingers and hoping so… We’ll know more when we get back, but I hope I’m right. But it’s not that worst case scenario.”
Nonetheless, that transient second Saturday was a reminder of simply how shortly a key harm might sprint championship hopes.
