Geno Auriemma Jokes About His 'Christmas Day' UConn Practice Without Paige Bueckers
The women's basketball community held its collective breath on January 5, when UConn Huskies superstar player Paige Bueckers went down with a knee injury.
Bueckers chased after a loose ball in the third quarter when a Villanova player dove for the ball and crashed into the side of Bueckers' left leg (the same leg that she tore her ACL in back in August 2022).
Bueckers, in clear pain, eventually limped off the court and into the locker room before returning to the bench shortly after and could be seen wiping tears out of her eyes.
Paige Bueckers returns to the UConn bench: pic.twitter.com/DajmOmkY7A
— UConn on SNY (@SNYUConn) January 5, 2025
Fans initially feared the worst. But they were feeling reassured by Bueckers' mobility and lack of crutch or brace after the game ended.
And now the whole community can exhale after Huskies head coach Geno Auriemma confirmed that the injury wasn't serious on Tuesday. She seems to have suffered a relatively minor knee sprain, will likely miss a couple of games, and will be back on the court shortly.
In fact, Auriemma was in such a good mood about this news that he cracked a joke about Bueckers not being able to practice.
"She's in great spirits," Auriemma said of Bueckers, per The UConn Daily YouTube channel. He later added, "We banned her from practice. So she was in the training room, and she was looking in through the window, and that was it.
"For me, it was like Christmas Day," Auriemma added. "Everybody nodded their head yes when I said something, nobody rolled their eyes, nobody had their own team huddle and told the guys what to do that was quite different than what I said. She does things to get on my nerves because she knows it bugs me. So I didn't have to deal with that today."
Geno Auriemma says no MRI was needed to diagnose Bueckers’ injury.
— Jake McCreven (@mccrevenjake) January 7, 2025
Geno said that practice today was like “Christmas Day” since nobody “rolled their eyes” when he gave directions.
While Auriemma would obviously want Bueckers at full health and back at practice, his joke did seem to contain some truth.
Grant Young covers Women’s Basketball, the New York Yankees, and the New York Mets for Sports Illustrated’s ‘On SI’ sites. He holds an MFA degree in creative writing from the University of San Francisco (USF), where he also graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in Marketing and played on USF’s Division I baseball team for five years. However, he now prefers Angel Reese to Angels in the Outfield.