STORRS — The UConn women’s basketball team got a positive omen for the 2024-25 season ahead of its opener against Boston University at the XL Center: The Huskies will have 10 players available to play on Thursday for the first time in almost a year.
UConn has been plagued by injuries for three consecutive seasons, and the team has not had five-plus healthy bench players since Aubrey Griffin suffered a season-ending ACL tear against Creighton on Jan. 2. The team finished 2023-24 with just six players in the regular rotation, three freshmen, and superstar guard Paige Bueckers played most of the season out of position as a forward. Now with his most complete roster in months, coach Geno Auriemma has plenty of questions that he hopes will start to get answered this week.
“You just never know what you’re going to get … so I’m like everybody else probably, I’m anxious to see what it looks like,” Auriemma said. “I know what it looks like sometimes, so we’ll see. But it’s that time of the year. The season’s getting started, and from a coaching standpoint, the biggest danger you face at this time of the year, is the only vision you have in your mind is you know how you were playing in March. You’ve got to really just kind of get that out of your head and throw it away and say it’s not going to be like that.”
UConn will also have five players making their XL Center debuts on Thursday with two likely to start. Princeton transfer Kaitlyn Chen and freshman Sarah Strong both started in the Huskies’ exhibition game against Fort Hays State on Sunday, and both scored in double digits. Strong was the No. 1 recruit in the Class of 2024, and Auriemma believes her ceiling is as high as any superstar that has ever come through the program. That doesn’t mean Strong is immune to rookie nerves, but Auriemma has seen just how good it can be when Strong embraces her role.
“I think the big thing with Sarah, as is with most thinkers and pleasers, they’re probably the worst kind of freshman to have (because) they think too much and they want to just do the right thing,” Auriemma said. “For Sarah I want it to be instinctive for her, like I do for all my freshmen. Anytime a freshman comes here, that’s the first thing I talk to them about: ‘There’s a reason we recruited you, I watched you do all these things, so just go out and do them and don’t worry about anything else.’
“Well, that’s easier said than done, because they’re a nervous wreck, but (it takes) time. She’s getting the message, little by little.”
Sophomore guard KK Arnold, who started 33 games last season, did not play in the exhibition after rolling her foot in practice, but Auriemma said she is back to full involvement in practice and should take on a typical workload against BU. The Huskies’ coach also confirmed freshman Morgan Cheli is expected to play after grappling with hamstring and quad issues throughout the preseason. Cheli was ranked No. 11 in the 2024 class, and Auriemma said he’s looking forward to getting the versatile 6-foot-2 guard more involved.
“When she’s on the court, she’s a difference-maker. She makes plays, she makes things happen,” Auriemma said. “There’s never been a time when we’ve had her on the court where we haven’t benefited from her being on the floor, so the more that we can have her out there, the more she gets acclimated to all this. She fills a lot of roles because she’s bigger than most guards. She handles the ball like a guard, but she wants to play in the lane a lot like a forward.”
But the heart of UConn’s NCAA championship aspirations is Bueckers, who enters the season as the clear favorite to win National Player of the Year. Bueckers had a career season averaging 21.9 points, 5.2 rebounds, 3.8 assists, 2.2 steals and 1.4 blocks in 2023-24, but Auriemma has demanded an even more aggressive version of his superstar in her fifth and final season at UConn.
The Huskies are overwhelmingly inexperienced right now outside of Bueckers. Chen is the only one that has played more than a season of college basketball, but this is still her first season playing at this level. Though redshirt junior Azzi Fudd (ACL) and redshirt sophomore Ayanna Patterson (shoulder) are expected to return from injuries in the near future, both have played fewer than 45 games in their UConn careers. Because the active roster is so young, Auriemma is anticipating early growing pains, but he also know Bueckers is more capable than most of smoothing over the cracks.
“Whenever you have a player (like Bueckers) that can do those things, it’s a double-edged sword,” Auriemma said. “There were times in November last year where (her teammates) watched Paige play a lot instead of playing alongside of her. So this year I see it where we’re trying really hard to play together and not just watch Paige be great … We’ve got more people this year, and I still want her to try to get 30 whenever she can, but other people are going to have to contribute, and it’s going to be a process.”
How to watch
Site: XL Center, Hartford
Series record: UConn leads 8-4
Time: 7 p.m., Thursday
Last meeting: 96-38, UConn; Nov. 22, 2013 in Storrs
TV: SNY
Streaming: SNY.tv
