STORRS — As amazing as it is to have Paige Bueckers practicing more with UConn women’s basketball as she progresses in her ACL recovery, Azzi Fudd admits that it’s also a little “weird.” The pair haven’t been on the court together for nearly a year and it’s taking some getting used to.
Take the other day. They were playing and one of Bueckers’ passes slipped right through Fudd’s fingertips.
“And she’s like, ‘Why’d you’d drop my pass? Why did you miss that shot?’ ” Fudd recalled. “I was like, ‘I forgot how good your passes were. I’m not used to that.’ ”
“And I said, ‘All right, like we’re about to play together. Get ready, bro,’ ” Bueckers said. “This is real life now.”
Bueckers recently passed the 10-month mark since tearing the ACL in her left knee during a pickup game on Aug. 1, 2022, missing the entirety of her junior year. She spoke with the media and provided an update on her recovery process on Wednesday.
“I’m feeling really good,” Bueckers said. “I’m definitely starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel and the finishing mark. But there’s a long way to go. I mean, ACL recoveries take a long time. But in terms of playing and getting cleared, I’m very close. I’m playing like three on three, two on two, one on one and individual team workouts and stuff like that, but I haven’t been cleared for like five and five live.
“That’s the last little benchmark to be like fully cleared. But I’m in no rush, our whole team and staff is in no rush. We have a lot of time, so.”
It remains to be seen whether Bueckers will play during the Huskies’ European tour to Croatia, Italy and Slovenia in August.
“I mean, I probably could, but there’s still trying to balance [if it’s] worth it,” Bueckers said. “Technically the season or real games don’t start until November, so it’s just trying to make sense of it all. Get out the pros and the cons and we’ll see.”
When those games do start in November, the Huskies are certainly looking forward to having Bueckers back on the floor.
“Just to play back on the court with her, her presence, what she brings to the team, both on the court, off the court it’s just gonna be amazing to have that energy and have her back,” Aaliyah Edwards said. “Because she’s ‘P Buckets,’ she’s always clutch and that’s what really the team missed and what we need.”
Bueckers recounted the timeline of her past 10 months of recovery on Wednesday. She explained that she struggled the most during the first week after tearing the ACL, before having surgery on Aug. 9.
“I had trouble, I had anxiety, I couldn’t sleep,” Bueckers said. “I would have people pinch because I didn’t think it was real. And I was asking like why, like this doesn’t make sense. I was feeling healthy, strong, I had just come back from a different knee injury, so like why now? Why me?
“But I think the biggest thing that I’ve leaned on in my faith is don’t lean on my own understanding, there’s just some things in life that you’ll never understand, but God does everything for a reason and He always has an understanding of everything.
“And I think God is using this and me as a testament to how much you can overcome with Him by your side and how much He can do for you. I feel like when I can’t do it, He’ll carry me through. So I think my faith has made me stop questioning why because I just trust.”
With basketball taken away from her, Bueckers also learned more about who she is as a person and what she values in life.
“The big picture of life is to never take anything for granted,” Bueckers said. “At any single moment of any single day, anything can be taken away from you. And to just look at how much of a blessing it is to wake up every morning and trying to find the extreme positives in life and trying to use this adversity to know that there’s a better story coming. And sort of finding my identity outside of basketball and how much I value first being a good person. That is exemplified and magnified when you’re not playing basketball.”
The first three months were pretty boring and repetitive for Bueckers as she worked to get flexion and extension back in her knee. Around Christmas, she hit a point where she was getting really sick of doing the same things every single day.
“I just was mentally and physically fatigued and exhausted,” Bueckers said. “And then I went home for three days and Christmas and did nothing, just spent time with my family, with my little brother. And that sort of like reignited me and gave me a new energy when I got back to school just being refreshed.”
Once she got back to school, Bueckers was able to get a basketball back in her hand and was soon after cleared to start working on jump shots again, which allowed her to slowly start feeling like a basketball player again. That lifted her spirts and she said she’s had less bad days since, though those never fully go away with any recovery process.
From the three-to-six-month mark, every day was leg day as Bueckers worked to get strength back in her quads, hamstrings, calves and everything lower body. And around the five-month mark she was cleared to start working on 3-point shooting.
“Those were big milestones for me,” Bueckers said. “Just be able to put a ball in my hand and to shoot just made me extremely happy.”
Around six or seven months Bueckers started cutting more and doing more on the court and movement wise. She started doing more jumping, with single leg jumping, single leg landings, hops and things like that. And at eight or nine months, she was cleared for “pretty heavy contact”, individual and team workouts.
“She’s been working so hard, on the court, with her rehab, in the weight room getting stronger,” Fudd said. “This is her time, it’s all gonna pay off. She’s worked so hard, so I’m really excited. Even just seeing her do more stuff on the floor now, I’m really excited to see her continue.”
The ACL tear came after Bueckers’ missed 19 games in her sophomore season with an anterior tibial plateau fracture and lateral meniscus tear in the same left knee. The 6-foot point guard became the first freshman in women’s college basketball history to earn the Wooden Award, Naismith Trophy, AP Player of the Year and USBWA Player of the Year honors in 2020-21. She averaged 20 points, 5.8 assists, 4.9 rebounds and 2.3 steals per game that year. And Bueckers believes she can come back as an even better player now.
“I’m lifting as much weight as I ever have and taking care of my body as much as I ever have,” Bueckers said. “But as I experienced my sophomore season when I was trying to come back it wasn’t as fluid as I wanted it to be, there was ups and downs, highs and lows. … I’m not rushing it. I know I say that now, but I want to be the type of player I was before pre-injury but better and I have those expectations for myself.”
Bueckers also knows the expectations at UConn: To win a national championship. That is once again the aspiration for her and her teammates, especially after coming up short in the Sweet 16 last season.
“That’s always the main goal,” Bueckers said. “For expectations from the outside, I would say nobody else puts higher expectations on me than I put on myself. So I have really big goals and really big aspirations this year, and at the forefront of it just to have fun playing the game of basketball again.”
Bueckers is listed on the 2023-24 UConn roster as a redshirt junior. Beyond next season, there are plenty of questions around college and WNBA circles around how much longer she plans to stay in college, especially given how little time she has played so far due to injury and how well she has been able to profit off of name, image and likeness.
“I’ve really learned in all that I’ve been through not to speak about the future because you never know what’s going to happen,” Bueckers said when asked about the topic on Wednesday. “So I’m just trying to stay present, stay in the moment but you never know. I have no idea.”
Update on Amari DeBerry
Junior Amari DeBerry revealed that she had surgery for a herniated disk in her lower back on May 5.
“So now I’m just rehabbing, focusing on getting stronger and healthy,” DeBerry said.
The forward said her recovery is supposed to be “pretty quick” and her goal is to be ready for UConn’s European trip in August.
