Why pickup games are the lifeblood of UConn's summer workouts

When UConn women’s basketball convenes on campus for summer workouts, little time is spent on formal instruction. During the offseason, the NCAA only allows eight hours of required basketball activities per week and only half of that can be dedicated to skill work, so the coaches are limited in what they can do.

“We only have like one practice day a week as a team workout,” Ashlynn Shade explained. “Then the rest of the days, we're either playing pickup or we have guard workouts or individuals.”

Despite that, the players still spend the entire month of June playing basketball, they just do so on their own with informal pickup games. Though they lack the typical structure of a practice or the oversight from the coaching staff, it’s still a crucial piece of development — individually and collectively.

“From the first week playing, it looked like a complete circus. It looked crazy,” Azzi Fudd said. “Now this week, games are competitive, you’re starting to understand what people like, their tendencies. So it's been a lot of fun.”

Pickup provides the team with its first real chance to play together and build on-court chemistry. Even though the Huskies return 10 players, the dynamics are completely different from last season. They have to figure out how to replace Paige Bueckers, Kaitlyn Chen and Aubrey Griffin, integrate five newcomers and settle in new roles.

That process takes time, so the more they’re on the court together, the faster it’ll come along.

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