Stords — Adgefad UConn Women’s Basketball Program From her attention-grabbing recruitment slingshot, and like Paige Bueckers A year ago, I arrived at Stose with the same hype as high school students in recent years.
She was able to show the reason from 2021 to 22 — sometimes anyway. Not so many at the beginning and end, Fadd flashed a quick-release shoot stroke, and Stephen Curry was once the smoothest and sometimes best player on the court in basketball.
But the challenge of adapting to a new life, a new level of basketball, and even more injuries confused Fadd’s freshman season and prevented her from consistently standing out. Her setbacks allowed her to actually fit into the theme of the season marked by players who were forced to rest and rehabilitate off the court.
“It was really hard to see her and Page sitting there. The two kids love to play.” Director Geno Aurima I said at the Wealth Champions Center last week. “Two really skilled players and they are sitting there looking at the big, big chunks of the season. I hope it created the feeling that I really want to make sure I’m ready.” .. I want to be able to play the full season. “
“She doesn’t play at all, she plays great, and she’s become someone we really depended on and carried us for a long time, and then she had the opportunity to do it in the previous game. I didn’t get. I think her season was almost the whole season. “
Fad played 25 of UConn’s 36 games with an average of 12.1 points and 27.9 minutes, shooting 45.7 percent from the field and 43 percent with three points. She lost 25 points to Villanova, 29 points to Tennessee and 24 points to Marquette.
It’s a solid job for freshmen, but it’s been interrupted. Fad was absent for two months due to a leg injury and returned to bloom when UConn gathered for another run to the Final Four. After that, it was limited to 3 points and 16 minutes. National Championship Game Defeat to South Carolina.. She came down with a bug in her stomach the night before the match.
Currently, like other UConn guards, Fudd is in Storrs for a summer class and a five-week training session, the first component for the 2022-23 season. Fad has a separate job, but for preventive reasons, he does not have a full coat 5 to 5 training. Auriema said the team wanted to make sure there was nothing left from the foot injury.
This period is just a depressing stage for Fudd and the whole team. For some players, it’s about tweaking. For some, it’s about being comfortable in the new school. For others, it’s still about getting healthy. At this time, only five players are in full operation: Bookers, Nikamule, Lulopes Senetical, Junior Forward Aaliyah Edwards, and Freshman Wing Ayanna Patterson. And Patterson hit his elbow during training last Wednesday.
“One of our practitioners, their faces were in the wrong place and at the wrong time,” said Auriemma.
Some of Auriemma are wondering what Husky is doing at the gym in June.
“I’m still in an old school and I’m telling myself,’Why do you do this?'” He said. “Some pretty good players came here and I’m really good at it. I couldn’t do anything in June, July and August. Now you bring your kids to campus all summer. And I’m working with them. By the time November comes, “Hey, see you again?”
“So I think we’re different, but fortunately, in all of July and August, I don’t see them, I don’t talk to them, they have nothing to do with this place No, they’re gone. And I love it. It’s like grind from September to the end of March. Now you have three weeks off in May and then you [work] It will be back soon in the 5 weeks of June. I don’t know, myself. “
However, any team basketball setting is worth it.
“Often I think, [players] When they are in high school, they come out and work with trainers. This is the largest bull that has ever existed, “said Auriemma. “Some kids are very good at hitting cones, and when you put a ball stealer in there, they say they’re not as good as they are if they put their arms and legs in a cone. So what they’re learning now is how to play against living humans … the big thing we’re trying to teach them is as long as they keep their scores. It means you have to play to win. And it seems to have been on the roadside for years, it just says, “Just play, let me train and show me. Please. ” You just made 8 3s in a row. I made 15 pull-up jump shots. But when we went down two and had three seconds left, you bricked four in a row. “
The Bookers were wearing crutches at this point last year and recovered from ankle surgery in April 2021. She led Husky to the final four with a spectacular performance in Elite Eight’s double overtime after missing almost everything last season with her knee injury. Victory over NC.
A graduate from Fairfield, Lopez Seneschal is adapting to the new team, feeling the fierce competition she has longed for. A small forward and border threat that Husky wants to extend his defenses in her range, she averaged 19.6 points at Stags and shot 40% with 3 points as a senior last season.
Last season’s Big East Defensive Player of the Year Mir is working on the other side of the game with simplification.
“Obviously, when Nika was on the floor, we were another team,” Oriemma said. “Nika must be more aggressive and more consistently aggressive. She is less likely to leave her to make people more vigilant and double someone else. Need to be more threat. She’s more factor and needs to be more threatening, so far it’s been her focus throughout this postseason. Getting to the basket is a problem for Nika. It’s not. It’s finished.
“If Nika was a baseball player, she would be grazing because she wouldn’t hit a home run. She would be a singles batter. We don’t have to make her eight-three games. After she breaks in. So I have to take 5 pull-up jump shots, so it’s unattractive that Nika is working on it. And she’s improved. She’s finer now than the end of the season. . “
Of course, the season ended in disappointment. Dissatisfied with being on the brink of the national championship, UConn players have come up with the idea that this off-season feels very different from the summers of other young lives.
“This may be one of the best bull lines I’ve ever heard in my life. The player’s path is,” I’m using this to motivate next season, “Auriema said. Said. “It lasts until around April 14th, and then it’s gone. The effect may remain when practice begins, but many other things are happening in people’s lives today. I think that there.”
Auriemma mentioned the iconic players of another era. When Sue Bird was a junior and Diana Torashi was a freshman in 2001, UConn lost to Notre Dame in the Final Four and was 39-0 at the 3rd National Championship of the 2002 program.
“Sue and D, and they were so embarrassed and so angry when they lost in St. Louis that this novel to our team from the moment the plane landed when we returned to Connecticut. The spirit continued. The day we landed until they cut the net in San Antonio, “he said. “And no one said a word about it. But it was there every day. You could feel it. No, there aren’t that many in today’s world.”
mike.anthony@hearstmediact.com; @ManthonyHearst
