Connecticut coach Geno Auriemma might know better than anyone that winning a championship is not always based on skill alone.
There’s luck and perfect timing involved.
Teams have to stay healthy and be playing their best basketball when it matters most.
Health has not been a strong suit for Connecticut (8-0) over the past few seasons.
Paige Bueckers, the top player of the 2020 recruiting class, missed all of the 2022-23 season rehabbing from a knee injury.
Azzi Fudd, the top player of the 2021 class, was sidelined for most of last season and the start of this one after suffering ACL and medial meniscal tears.
This season, in some ways, has been years in the making.
Finally, Bueckers and Fudd have a clean bill of health at the same time. Connecticut’s two stars can join forces and, perhaps, lead the Huskies to their record 12th championship and put an end to Auriemma’s nine-year title drought — his longest since he won his first in 1995.
No. 2 Connecticut entered Saturday’s Champions Classic as one of college basketball’s hottest teams.
But an injury scare in the third quarter of their 85-52 blowout win over No. 22 Louisville had many in Barclays Center holding their breath.
Fudd got sandwiched between two Louisville players and collapsed to the floor. She immediately reached for her surgically repaired right knee.
The ball remained in play, and Fudd eventually mustered the strength to get up.
She gingerly made her way to the left corner, where she knocked in a 3 that put Connecticut up 63-26.
When a timeout was finally called, Fudd made her way straight to the locker room.
“Obviously you don’t want to see that,” Bueckers said. “But as a team, we had to really band together, weather the storm, not play too much into the emotions and try to just focus on the game, but definitely feel for her [in that moment].”
Fudd returned to the team’s bench later in the third quarter and didn’t play another second. By the fourth, though, she was seen standing and cheering on her teammates as they demolished Louisville.
After the win, Auriemma said Fudd was walking around and appeared “fine.”
“It didn’t look like worst case scenario,” Auriemma said. “We were crossing our fingers and hoping so… We’ll know more when we get back, but I hope I’m right. But it’s not that worst case scenario.”
Still, that brief moment Saturday was a reminder of just how quickly a key injury could dash championship hopes.
