Paige Bueckers' jammed thumb is "all good"

Paige Bueckers eased any concerns about her latest injury with an appropriate gesture: two thumbs up. The redshirt junior jammed her left thumb prior to First Night on Oct. 13 and missed a few practices, but is now on the mend.

“Double thumbs up,” Bueckers said with a smile at Big East Media Day on Tuesday. “It’s all good.”

When Geno Auriemma first revealed the injury, he “hoped” it was only minor but didn’t provide much information beyond that. On Tuesday, the coach spoke with more certainty.

“She's been working out and practicing, just we try to limit (her),” he said. “But I'm not worried about it.”

Bueckers initially hurt her thumb while playing defense in practice. She was guarding a rolling player on a pick-and-roll and when she tried to take a charge her thumb got caught in the line of fire.

“It kind of just jammed,” she said. “But it's good, it’s healing, it’s getting better.”

Top-secret scrimmage

For the third consecutive year, UConn women’s basketball’s preseason competition will consist of a regular exhibition against a Division II opponent (SCSU on Nov. 4) as well as a so-called secret scrimmage vs. Division I competition. Auriemma revealed the Huskies will play the scrimmage this upcoming Saturday (Oct. 28) but said he couldn’t divulge any other information until afterward.

“It'll be our first scrimmage against somebody else but it's a secret and I can't tell you,” he said.

UConn did hold an intra-squad scrimmage recently, which featured a lights-out shooting performance from Caroline Ducharme: She went 8-9 on 3-pointers, according to Auriemma.

“She looks better than she's ever looked,” he said about the junior guard.

A return to Storrs South?

The Big East holds its annual basketball media day on the floor of Madison Square Garden, the venue of the men’s basketball conference tournament. UConn women’s basketball hasn’t played there since December 2015 — an 83-73 win over Maryland best remembered for the game-sealing 3-pointer from Saniya Chong — but that could change soon.

“We're going to play here, I think, twice next year if it all works out,” Auriemma said. “We don't know who yet.”

St. John’s women’s basketball will play a game at MSG against Villanova this year, but the Johnnies won’t be one of the Huskies’ two potential opponents there.

“I hope they (St. John’s) are a third because I love the exposure that we get and that we can get for St John's as well,” Auriemma said.

UConn is set to play St. John’s at UBS Arena, home of the New York Islanders, for the second consecutive season on Jan. 13.

Bueckers earns preseason All-American honors

After being named Big East Preseason Player of the Year, Paige Bueckers also landed on the AP’s Preseason All-American Team on Tuesday. She was joined on the team by Iowa’s Caitlin Clark (a unanimous selection), LSU’s Angel Reese, Stanford’s Cameron Brink, Virginia Tech’s Elizabeth Kitley, and Indiana’s Mackenzie Holmes.

Those are two big honors considering Bueckers missed all of last season with a torn ACL and sat out a big chunk of her sophomore year with a tibial plateau fracture and lateral meniscus tear in that same left knee. That doesn’t mean they aren’t deserved.

“I think that's a testament to her talent and what she did her freshman year and her sophomore year,” Auriemma said. “Can she come back and be all that again? I think so and maybe all the other coaches think so as well.”

“I'm not huge on individual awards and individual accolades but still, having people believe in me, believe what I can do on the court, it means a lot,” Bueckers said. “Coming back from injury, having that confidence, having other people still have confidence in me, it means a lot.”