The two days off UConn women’s basketball coach Geno Auriemma afforded his players in the wake of Monday’s 28-point rout of No. 6 Louisville were beneficial to those who are nursing nagging injuries. Arguably, no one needed the downtime more than junior forward Kaili McLaren.
McLaren has played just 13 minutes in the last games due to tendonitis in her left knee. She went through the entire practice today at Gampel Pavilion, with Auriemma applauding her performance afterwards.
“Today was the best she’s looked,’’ Auriemma said. “Those couple days off I think do wonders for kids. Kaili looked great.’’
McLaren played exceptionally well in a victory at then-No. 2 North Carolina Jan. 19, finishing with two points, four rebounds five assists, and two steals in a season-high 24 minutes. But in the days following that game she began experiencing pain in her knee.
She played just five first-half minutes at Cincinnati last Saturday, sitting on the bench with an ice bag on her knee in the second half. And McLaren logged just two of her eight minutes against Louisville in the first half Monday.
“There’s just sharp pains in it and it just hurt to play,’’ McLaren said. “The timing was terrible. Clearly I’m frustrated. I can’t let something like that bother me, but it did. It affected me, and I have to get back on track and bounce back. I want to be a positive even if I can’t contribute 100 percent physically.’’
Auriemma said he is uncertain how many minutes McLaren will log Saturday in what will be a homecoming game for her at Georgetown. She said she grew up 15 minutes away from the campus. Her mother, Rosemarie, bought about 30 tickets to the game Wednesday and McLaren also obtained a couple from her teammates.
McLaren’s playing time will largely depend on how she feels. But if it was up to senior Renee Montgomery she would not play at all.
“It’s tough because whenever somebody has a certain type of injury you want them to kind of preserve themselves because you don’t want them to push themselves too far to where they do something where they can’t play any more,’’ Montgomery said. “So if I had a choice I would rather her not even play this game and just rest up because I think it’s important to get healthy.’’
Geno will have a chance to pay his respects to former NC State coach Kay Yow today when services are held at the Colonial Baptist Church in Cary, N.C. She died last Saturday at the age of 66 after battling breast cancer for more than 20 years.
There has been speculation that Yow’s passing might be used as a catalyst to resurrect the UConn/Tennessee series. Geno had worked with Kay in the fight against cancer, while Kay served as an assistant coach under Lady Vols coach Pat Summitt on the 1984 U.S. Olympic Team. The game would serve as a fundraiser.
However, Geno quickly squashed the idea of hooking up with Tennessee.
“I think it would cheapen it,’’ he said. “Kay Yow was a lot closer to Pat than she was to me, supposedly. I know Pat was the head coach and Kay was the assistant. Hey, when Kay was alive she never called me and said, `You should play Tennessee and should make a fundraiser out of it.’ So my guess is when she’s up in heaven she’s not sitting up there going, `I should’ve told Geno and Pat to play each other.’’
“I’ve not had any discussions with anybody. I’ve not given it one moment of thought. I don’t intend to and I don’t anticipate anybody bringing it up that would have any significance to me. There’s a lot of things that we could do that I know we plan on doing down the road from a WBCA standpoint, from a Coaches Association and from a Jimmy V Foundation that will involve Kay. Us playing Tennessee, as far as I’m concerned, won’t be one of them.’’
Rich
