It has been a bad week for the UConn women’s basketball team. A week ago, Azzi Fudd was announced to have a foot injury that is expected to keep her out for at least two weeks. Then, there was Paige Bueckers’ injury in the game against Notre Dame on Sunday, which consisted of a fracture to her knee that will keep her out for an expected 6 to 8 weeks according to the team.
Now, the team has announced that Nika Mühl will be out for probably about three weeks with a foot injury. With Aubrey Griffin still day-to-day due to a back injury, the Huskies will have just nine available players for their games this week.
The first of those games is a Thursday matchup with Georgia Tech. The Yellow Jackets are sitting with a record of 6-2. Over the weekend, they beat Georgia who is ranked 21st, handing them their only loss of the season.
They’ve been a relatively low scoring team, getting 74 points at most in the first eight games of their season. The Huskies, who have scored at least 70 in four of their six games, will likely be hoping for a strong offensive effort to try and overpower the offense of the Yellow Jackets.
With the absence of Bueckers, the Huskies will have to look further into the team to try and find people who are able to make up for her. Bueckers’ had averaged 21.2 points per game with 36.3 minutes played and losing that is going to be painful.
The pressure will be on players like Christyn Williams and Evina Westbrook to pick up the slack and score points in her absence. Both have played an average of more than 30 minutes a game and averaged 15 and 9 points, respectively, numbers they’ll be looking to increase with Bueckers’ absence.
Another player who could prove to be helpful is Caroline Ducharme. Ducharme, who has struggled this season, playing just 7.8 minutes per game with an average of 3.6 points, was impressive on Sunday with 14 points in as many minutes played. If she can harness that level of performance for a longer duration of time, or at least more often, she could be a powerful shooting force for the Huskies.
This is the first of two games for the Huskies, who will then be set up for a matchup with UCLA later in the week. For now, though, they’ll be playing at 7 p.m. in Georgia. The game will be streamed on ESPN2.
