There is no in-season trade deadline in college sports … at least, not yet. But the UConn women’s basketball team got the next best thing going in their favor on Sunday.
“She’s baaaack,” Aubrey Griffin’s teammates were saying all week when they passed her in the hallways. And when she checked into Sunday’s game against Seton Hall with 4:37 left in the first half, her first appearance since being helped off the court at Creighton with a torn ACL on Jan. 3, 2024, UConn had the college equivalent of a veteran acquired at midseason for a postseason run. A difference-maker.
“It’s Aubrey Day,” Paige Bueckers told SNY’s Chelsea Sherrod as she walked off the court. “To see her, how hard she’s worked, everything she’s been through, and how it’s never deterred who she is as a basketball player and a human being. It’s extremely rewarding to see her have fun out there.”
Griffin, entering to a loud reception from UConn fans, played about 10 minutes, scoring three points, with four rebounds and two assists. She was just getting her legs under her, and her full impact was hardly needed as UConn overmatched Seton Hall, 96-36. (And Seton Hall came in with a 5-1 record in Big East play.)
But when Griffin, 6 feet 1, in her sixth season at UConn, gets up to full speed, her impact could be felt in games in which the Huskies will be challenged, at Tennessee and South Carolina next month and in the late stages of the NCAA Tournament.
In getting Griffin back in late January, UConn, which already has the talent and depth to go back to the Final Four, gets a large dose of some of the things it doesn’t necessarily have. The moment a fully healthy Griffin gets out there, the Huskies get longer and more athletic, can become more dynamic on offense, more menacing on defense, more experienced off the bench. In the 12 months since Griffin went down, UConn lost five out of 44 games, but was twice torched for 30-plus points by Hannah Hidalgo in losses to Notre Dame, and gave up 25 to JuJu Watkins in a two-point loss to Southern Cal last month.
Does UConn win those games if Griffin is available to guard the opponents’ best players? Could she be, even if coming off the bench, that little extra something that could make the difference? Geno Auriemma and his assistants would love to find out, when the championship is on the line.
UConn’s performance Sunday was notable for Paige Buecker’s 2,000th career point, and for the sustained look at Bueckers, Azzi Fudd and Sarah Strong, healthy at the same time and forming an in-sync “Big Three,” something else the teams that have beaten UConn the last few years have not had to defend.
Those are big deals. But Griffin, as a missing piece of a puzzle, could be just as big. When she came to UConn in 2019, she wasn’t a top-10 recruit, but Auriemma saw something in the daughter of former NBA player and coach Adrian Griffin. She has played 111 college games, averaging 21 minutes, 8.2 points, 5.7 rebounds. Whenever a switch was somehow flipped, though, Aubrey Griffin could be far more dynamic than those stats indicate.
And that was beginning to happen more consistently last season, before Griffin landed awkwardly at the baseline in Omaha, when her “last season” ended.
“Her injury came right in the midst of when she was playing the best basketball of her career,” Auriemma said.
The team was devastated for her, the postgame locker room, bus ride to the airport and trip to Washington for the next game as somber as witnesses had ever seen. When Griffin, who has missed the 2021-22 season with a back injury, announced to the UConn fans on Senior Night that she would return for her extra year of eligibility, there was hope. Like Bueckers and Fudd, she worked diligently, day by day to return once her left knee was repaired. The typical 12-month recovery leaves her with 2 1/2 months to leave the mark she came to UConn to make.
“She has put in a lot of effort, a lot of time, a lot of work into doing all this and she has to be rewarded,” Auriemma said. “Some way, she has to be rewarded. I’m grateful she’s going to get an opportunity to give it a shot.”
And maybe the UConn team, after years in a dark forest full of injuries, is about to be rewarded, too. Without COVID, without the injuries and the red-shirting, the Huskies would not have a team like it has assembled right now. Established stars and future stars in the making all together, from freshmen like Strong, 18, to Griffin, 23, who earned her degree in women’s studies nearly two years ago.
“It feels great to be back out there with my teammates,” Griffin told reporters after the game, “and it’s been a long process and every single one of them has been with me every step. I’m just so grateful to be out there again.”
Griffin said she could hardly sleep Saturday night, knowing she had been medically cleared to play, with a restriction on minutes. When she came out to stretch Sunday, the student section chanted for her. After she checked in, Bueckers immediately got her the ball.
“To let her know at that all of us believe in her and are excited to have her back was definitely the goal,” Bueckers said.
Griffin ended up at the line and made one. She returned for the final 6 1/2 minutes, and KK Arnold found her running down the floor with a long pass for a layup, Griffin’s first bucket bringing the UConn bench, which by then had all the starters, to their feet. The Huskies led 89-33, but the basket felt rather important. For Aubrey Griffin and her teammates, it certainly was.
“The first time I went in I was a little nervous,” Griffin said. “The second time I was a little more comfortable. I know it’s my first game and I know it’s going to take a couple of games to get to feeling like myself, but I think today was a good start.”
