Caroline Ducharme makes surprise return against Butler

As UConn women’s basketball wrapped up an otherwise uneventful victory at Butler on Saturday, there came a late surprise: With 2:21 remaining in the contest, Caroline Ducharme checked into the game.

The redshirt junior hadn’t played all season due to head/neck injuries. In fact, her last contest came on Nov. 14, 2023 — 461 days ago. 63 games had passed between Ducharme’s appearances, four more than she’s played in her entire career (59).

“It's been a long time coming for her,” Geno Auriemma said afterwards.

“She's dedicated her entire life to getting back doing what she loves,” Paige Bueckers told SNY. “To have that moment, no matter how long or what the stakes are, just to see her back out there doing what she loves, knowing she's getting rewarded for a lot of hard work and a lot of faith.”

Donning a protective headband, Ducharme finished with two minutes and one rebound, though the act of getting back on the court itself far outweighed the performance. A huge smile spread across her face as she was mobbed by her teammates postgame.

“It’s something that nobody knew if it would ever work out again or when it would work out. So I'm thrilled that she was given the go-ahead,” Auriemma said. “She loves this game, she loves playing, she loves her teammates. So to give her an opportunity to play a couple minutes, I felt really good for her.”

“It brings you to tears because of everything she's been through and everything she's overcame and how much work she's put into it,” Bueckers said.

Although Ducharme has been warming up with the team for a few weeks now, there was no indication that a return to game action was imminent. Even with her return, expectations should be low — if not non-existent — going forward.

“It's going to be a slow, slow process,” Auriemma said. “I'm glad that we were able to give her that and build on it little by little and see where that takes us.”

By playing on Saturday, Ducharme loses her chance to potentially gain an additional year of eligibility by redshirting, though that was never a concern.

“Knowing Caroline, if [on] March 1 she goes, ‘I'm good to go,’ she'll want to play in the Big East Tournament and the NCAA Tournament,” Auriemma said back on Jan. 7. “Caroline just loves to play. But I also know Caroline, and I know that if you told her, ‘Maybe take a redshirt year,’ she’d go, ‘Really, I don't want to be as old as Coach Auriemma still be going to school here at some point.’ … There's only so much time that you can be here.”

As a redshirt junior, Ducharme has one season of eligibility left after this current campaign.

Now in her fourth season at UConn, she has played in just 59 of a possible 141 games due to a series of head and neck injuries. They first started during her freshman year when she took a few shots to the head and sat for four games. The team maintained that she hadn’t suffered a concussion.

As a sophomore, Ducharme did suffer a concussion after running into a screen in practice and missed 13 contests over a six-week span. During UConn’s European trip in the summer of 2023, she took a ball off the head during the opening exhibition and sat out the remaining games.

Ducharme played the first four games of the 2023-24 season but on the Huskies’ flight to the Cayman Islands for a tournament, the plane encountered severe turbulence.

“Flying to a game and we're bouncing around, then you get off the plane and everything hurts, everything's bad. I feel terrible for the kid,” Auriemma said at the time.

She hadn’t played since — until Saturday.

Ducharme hasn’t just been kept off the court by all the head and neck issues. They’ve affected her day-to-day life as well.

“Doing everyday things, now I have to think about it more, take extra precautions around it,” she said at the start of the 2023-24 season. “The usual things like being in bright lights, loud noises, schoolwork, looking at screens, watching TV. Little things that you don't really even think about.”

In her career, Ducharme has proven to be an impact player when healthy. When UConn was ravaged by injuries during her freshman campaign, the Milton, Massachusetts native averaged 16.2 points over a 16-game span.

Ducharme’s also flashed a clutch gene, hitting a last-second game winner in her first season against DePaul and scoring 10 fourth quarter points to help UConn erase an 11-point defict in the final 10 minutes against Creighton the following year.

The 6-3 guard averaged 8.4 points and 3.5 rebounds on 43.1 percent shooting overall prior to Saturday.

Whether or not Ducharme can make a difference for UConn down the stretch is largely irrelevant. She went almost a year and a half without playing in a single game. The fact that she returned at all is worth celebrating.

“We're pretty excited,” Auriemma said. “She's worked awfully hard to get to this point.”