Caroline Doty might look as though she has fully recovered from the torn ACL in her left knee that sidelined her for the final 22 games last season. She is averaging 25.8 minutes through the first 19 games this season for the unbeaten Huskies, and she played at least 30 minutes in a season-high three games prior to playing 28 at Villanova Saturday.
But Monday provided another example that this is still a process for Doty and UConn. After participating in the first half of practice at Gampel Pavilion, Huskies coach Geno Auriemma held her out for the remainder of practice to give her some rest. Doty instead spent time riding a stationary bike on the sideline.
This is a practice that Auriemma has regularly employed throughout the season when the days with a heavy work load have begun to mount for Doty.
“We’ve gone, what, a couple games in a row now, a couple days in a row,’’ Auriemma said. “So we always do that after a couple days. She played Saturday. We practiced Sunday. We play tomorrow. We had practice Friday. So I don’t like to have her go too many days in a row the whole practice.’’
Auriemma also rested Lorin Dixon, who missed the first nine games with a strained left hamstring, for the better part of the final half of practice too.
“Yeah, pretty much the two of them,’’ Auriemma said. “Whenever I get a chance I kind of give them a little free time.’’
With Doty and Dixon out, Kelly Faris and Kalana Greene spent time at point guard along with Tiffany Hayes as the Huskies ran a drill that focused on their halfcourt offense.
“Things were going really, really well and I wanted to jumble things up a little bit and I put Kalana at the point there just to remind me that this is very fragile and it could fall part any day now,’’ Auriemma said. “So all you have to do is watch her play up there for about 15 minutes and then go over and rub Caroline’s knee a little bit and make sure it’s feeling better. Go rub some ice on Lorin’s hamstring. All of sudden you become Dr. Geno.
He then she dropped the sarcasm and commented on the value of having players play different positions in practice just in case they are needed to do the same in games.
“You have to move around a little bit,’’ Auriemma said. “You have to play different positions for us. We’ve got to do different things in practice. I think that’s what keeps us a step ahead of everybody. If people try to defend us a certain way I want to have an answer for everything, and that answer can’t just be, `Well, you’ve got Tina (Charles) and Maya (Moore).’ It’s a little more complicated than that I think.’’
Rich
