Notes and observations from UConn's open practice and scrimmage

UConn women’s basketball hosted an open practice at Sacred Heart University on Sunday, providing the first look at the 2025-26 edition of the team. The session lasted 90 minutes and finished with an intrasquad scrimmage. The team did not make coaches or players available to the media, so there are no quotes to pass along.

Attendance

Did not practice: Morgan Cheli, Jana El Alfy
Limited: Ashlynn Shade, Blanca Quiñonez

When UConn first came onto the court, everyone except Morgan Cheli jogged out in full uniform. The sophomore followed shortly afterwards sporting a hoodie, which indicated she wouldn’t participate. She underwent ankle surgery in February and sat out summer workouts, so she’s likely still recovering from that. During introductions, the players had to run from one end of the court to another, but Cheli was visibly hobbled and could only fast-walk over.

Meanwhile, El Alfy dressed as if she were set to practice but watched everything from the sidelines while Quiñonez participated in the initial drill before stepping out. Neither had any obvious signs of injury (such as bandages, braces, etc.). Shade had her upper right leg wrapped but went through all the drills with no apparent restrictions but sat out the entire scrimmage.

Allie Ziebell wore a face mask, as she did all summer, but was a full participant.

Practice

The event was broken into two main parts: Traditional practice and the intrasquad scrimmage.

During the opening period of practice, UConn split up into backcourt and frontcourt groups for positional drills. Azzi Fudd, Caroline Ducharme, KK Arnold, Ashlynn Shade, Kayleigh Heckel, Allie Ziebell and Kelis Fisher were the guards, while Sarah Strong, Jana El Alfy, Ice Brady, Ayanna Patterson, Serah Williams, Blanca Quiñonez and Gandy Malou-Mamel were the bigs.

After that, the Huskies ran through a handful of full-team activities. In one particular drill that ended with a 3-point shot, UConn collectively started 0-7 from behind the arc and finished 2-11.

Scrimmage

Once drills were done, UConn held an intrasquad scrimmage that consisted of three periods of various lengths (at least one was 10 minutes, another was eight minutes). They had three officials on hand to call the game.

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