With criticism growing about the uncommon number of non-contact injuries in the UConn program – including from Women’s Hoops World – longtime coach Geno Auriemma purported to address the question recently.
But unfortunately, instead of discussing the unusual number of serious, season-ending leg and knee injuries, he relied on a classic deflection strategy: answer a different question.
After discussing the understandable negative effect of three years of injuries on player morale, Auriemma segued into a non-defense of the Huskies’ strength and conditioning program.
“And then what adds to the frustration, is none of these things were things that could be prevented,” he said.
“None of these things are like, you know, if you guys only did more of this, you could have prevented that. If you’d done less of that, it could have prevented that. If you’d have done this instead of that, you know, it would have been different.”
“What, that would have kept Dorka [Juhasz] from breaking her wrist or catching her thumb on some kid’s jersey and breaking her thumb? That would have kept Carol [Ducharme] from getting hit in the head five times?”
The problem with this response is that nobody was questioning contact injuries…
