With renewed love of the game, Azzi Fudd eager to return

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Headlines

News

• Injury updates: Ayanna Patterson dealing with shoulder injury

• Paige Bueckers named Big East Preseason Player of the Year

• Paige Bueckers named AP Preseason All-American

• Recruiting: UConn hosts three visits on First Night

• Breanna Stewart wins third WNBA championship

• Geno Auriemma, Ashlynn Shade, Azzi Fudd, Paige Bueckers, Sarah Strong 2024 Big East Media Day video

Analysis

• So far it's Paige Bueckers, Kaitlyn Chen, then everyone else

• Chasing Perfection: Breaking down the roster

Last week’s Weekly

• Kaitlyn Chen setting the tone for UConn

With renewed love of the game, Azzi Fudd eager to return

Azzi Fudd had no problem being brutally honestly about the situation she found herself in on Wednesday.

For the fourth time in as many years at UConn, she traveled with the team to Madison Square Garden for Big East Media Day after receiving a preseason honor. In 2021, she was tabbed as the preseason freshman of the year. The last three seasons, she’s landed on the All-Big East Preseason Team.

“I was kind of surprised to be back here. I've been here every year. They've always had me up for an award,” Fudd said.

But…

“I have not made it through a year yet.”

Injuries have plagued her UConn career to this point. A foot problem sidelined her for 11 games as a freshman, then a knee issue limited her to 15 of 37 games as a sophomore. Fudd made it through just two contests this past year before a torn ACL in practice ended her season.

While she won’t be back for the start of the upcoming campaign, she shouldn’t miss too much time. Geno Auriemma hopes she’ll be back for the “biggest, most important parts of our schedule” — which lines up with late November or early December — but Fudd doesn’t have any specific target in mind for her return, just that it’ll be “sooner rather than later.”

“Haven’t really had that conversation,” she said. “We're just taking it step by step. Each progression, making sure that I'm feeling good… and as I'm adding more, making sure my knee responds well.”

Still, Fudd is eager to return. Even though she won’t be ready for game action right away, she’s just glad to be playing basketball in any capacity after spending much of the last year in rehab.

“I've never been so happy to practice in my life,” Fudd said. “I’m like, ‘A practice tomorrow? Let's go.’ ‘Off day, aw. Like, do I need it? Yeah, but I can't wait to play with everyone in practice.’”

That enthusiasm is evident to those around her.

“Her passion and joy for basketball is back,” Paige Bueckers said. “Going through injury sort of strips you from it. Not being 100% strips you from it because you're not who you were when you were healthy and you're continuously fighting to get back there. So now that she's worked her butt off the entire rehab process, she's feeling healthy, she's feeling confident and she doesn't want to be a shell of herself anymore. You can see that and how happy she is to be back out on the court.”

During the brief spells in Fudd’s career that she’s been healthy, the results have been spectacular. As a freshman, she torched Tennessee for 25 points, then followed it up with 29 points against Villanova in the next contest.

When Bueckers went down with a torn ACL ahead of the 2022-23 season, Fudd put up 24.0 points with a blistering 63.2 field goal percentage and 43.5 field goal percentage through the first six games before a knee injury of her own derailed the rest of the year.

There’s a reason Fudd keeps ending up with preseason honors from the Big East.

“When Paige wasn't around, Azzi was unbelievably dominant,” Auriemma said.

That level of play shouldn’t be expected from day one, though. It’s been almost two calendar years since that stretch of six games, so Fudd will naturally have to knock some rust off. She tries to remind herself of that as she progresses back.

“That's another thing I've been working on: Being able to give myself grace knowing that I'm not going to come back and be 100 percent right away after being out,” Fudd said. “I do have high standards for myself, and I do want to see the ball go in every single time I shoot it, so just knowing that [not making every one is] okay and the next shot I take, it will go in.”

It helps that the remaining hurtles in Fudd’s recovery are all physical: She has to build her knee back up to full strength, refine her skills back to their previous level and prepare herself for live action. But as difficult as it was for Fudd to watch an entire year from the sidelines with no possibility of a return, she believes she benefitted from it — especially on the mental side.

“It forces you to see the game from a different perspective and it slows it down a little bit,” she explained. “You kind of understand and have a greater appreciation for your coach — what they’re talking about, what they see on the side. I think that is really going to help going into this year.”

Fudd has faced plenty of adversity throughout her UConn career, though the last 11 months since she tore her ACL have been particularly tough. Even if she won’t look like a superstar right away, she just wants to play again — regardless of who the opponent is.

“All of them,” Fudd said when asked what game she’s most looking forward to. “We could be playing literally anyone, I can't wait. I'm so excited just to be on the floor with a crowd, with my teammates. I can't wait.”

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