Chris Dailey walked into the training room and saw players flat on their back, working with sports performance director Andrea Hudy.
“I said, ‘I like that exercise,’” Dailey said. “But they were doing something with their neck which also is supposed to help with concussions. Whether it does or doesn’t, I don’t know, but we’re certainly aware and doing everything we can to keep our players healthy,”
The UConn women’s basketball program has tried everything, from assistant coach Morgan Valley burning sage, which Dailey first feared was a kitchen fire at the Werth Family Center, to having an indigenous hoop dancer perform a ritual that was supposed to heal. Dailey passed out before the game against NC State the following day. They have tried using holy water and accepted offers for prayers, Dailey said. And they have used all the scientific information available about fatigue and work load and the proper way to ramp back up.
Smoke, science, superstition, nothing has yet has been able to prevent the unpreventable, control the uncontrollable or explain the unexplainable. A sports operation so used to having things go right has run into a long and unfathomable stretch of injuries, enough to force the postponement of their game against DePaul on Sunday, which is all but unheard of, pre- or post-pandemic.
“It’s more just about trusting whatever plan is out there for us,” said Dorka Juhász, who has recovered from a broken wrist and a broken finger over the last eight months. “Just trusting that it’s going to work out. That’s the only way. If you’re always trying to find a ‘why,’ you can get lost in that.”
So there you have as good a mantra as any for the Huskies at this moment in time. Rather than asking why, they are intent on finding a way. They are, after all, 13-2, 6-0 in the Big East and ranked fourth in the country.
“There is some good to it,” Lou Lopez Sénéchal said. “We kind of needed those few days. Obviously, you never want to be short, to not play a game like that, but it’s maybe what we needed.”
Dailey, herself, is UConn’s next coach up. Geno Auriemma is still home focusing on his health, occasionally checking in with a text. “You know he’s bored when you get a text that just says, ‘hey,’” Dailey said. There is no timetable for him to return. Dailey, his second-in-command for 35 years, often comes to work wondering “what’s going to happen today?” But she arrives knowing whatever it is, it will be handled.
There was finally some good news to report Tuesday. Aaliyah Edwards is recovered from her ankle injury and will be available, giving UConn seven players to play at St. John’s on Wednesday. Azzi Fudd, out five weeks with a knee injury, could make it eight. Her return for limited minutes will be a game-time decision.
Caroline Ducharme and Ayanna Patterson are both in concussion protocol and will not go to New York. Paige Buckers and Ice Brady are lost for the season, leaving UConn with little margin to play with more injuries, and league rules say that they cannot without seven available to play without limitations.
The rule was designed for COVID, but after the Huskies last game, at Xavier, there was little choice but to take the step to postpone the next game and try to reschedule. Now it’s time to return and press on, with the same attitude that helped UConn get to the national championship game despite all the injuries last season.
“It’s been an emotional roller coaster for sure,” Juhász said. “This was the first time we actually didn’t have enough players. We’ve always found a way to put seven players out there that can compete and can win. Having that conversation with the coaches was super hard on us because, obviously, we want to play, we want to compete.”
There is always the instinct to ask why there are so many injuries and what can be done about it. If the Huskies were getting a lot of leg muscle strains, perhaps something could be done differently, but for concussions, broken bones, major joint injuries, there are only things that can be done to, maybe, improve the odds ever so slightly. For instance, there is evidence that increasing neck strength can reduce the concussion risk. There is more knowledge today about the connection between fatigue and injuries.
“We work with our strength coach and our athletic staff talking about the loads and what that looks like in terms of time,” Dailey said. “But there are days where it has to be more intense, days when it can be shorter, days when it can be longer and we adjust. But you can’t just look at the numbers, there’s an eye test, too. Having the information is helpful, but being able to combine that with what you see, where the team is, you have to have a feel for that.”
Should the Huskies, who began with 12 scholarship players, carry more, with walk-ons? Dailey said the program expects to have 14 players next season.
“You can never account for all the things that have happened,” she said. “You just can’t plan for that kind of thing. We just have to do what’s best [for the players] and figure it out.”
What the Huskies have figured out is how to be resilient through an array of setbacks that would sink a lot of teams. Part if it is that, well, there is always a lot of talent here. And part of it is something else: they’re not asking why, they’re just finding a way.
“We’re definitely not whiners,” Dailey said. “That’s not what we are. ... We don’t hide from anything here. This is factual, this is what we have, this is what we need to do and this is how we’re going to do it.”
