You know it's been a long season when a head coach is asked questions about the workload that the squad's athletic trainer has needed to endure.

Such was the case as Geno Auriemma met with the reporters in between his official off day press conference and a scheduled radio interview.

Stefanie Dolson, dealing with some issues in her legs, feet, ankles and knees, is the latest player added to the injury list.

When you go down the roster, the only UConn player who has physically been able to practice every day this season is senior reserve forward/center Heather Buck and even she missed practices due to the clinicals that she is required to attend as a nursing major.


"It has just been a 24 hour a day job for her and the her whole staff, mostly for her," Auriemma said. "It is just non-stop. It started on Oct. 15 and just hasn't stopped, then you throw in Brianna Banks (who suffered a season-ending torn ACL) and that is three hours of rehab every day so you put that plus everybody else, she (UConn athletic trainer Rosemary Ragle) deserves everything she is getting paid and is woefully underpaid as are most of the athletic trainers in the country."

I asked Auriemma that if UConn is able to have the full use of the rest of the Huskies for the remainder of the NCAA tournament would he consider nominating Ragle for a Huskies of Honor spot.

"Depends on how she gets everybody through the next game and if we win tomorrow and everybody is healthy beyond it will be a miracle," Auriemma said. "There is the ongoing Caroline one, there was the Stewie out for two weeks or a week, there was Stefanie, Kelly with the boot on her foot, Kaleena missing time, Morgan Tuck didn't practice regularly until three weeks, four weeks ago, Kiah Stokes got an MRI on her back about a week ago but look at Maryland's team, they had it worse than we did so there is no feeling sorry for yourself because everybody has had their issues all season long."

Dolson said she is feeling better and merely has to fight through whatever pain she is feeling which is not too different from what she said yesterday or the day before.

All the positive vibes making their way around Gampel Pavilion Saturday afternoon came screeching to a halt  less than two minutes into the Senior Day game against Seton Hall.

The visions of Caroline Doty favoring her left leg as she limped off the court brought a hush over the crowd of 9,107. Doty has been dealt a rugged fate over the last five or six years with a series of serious knee injuries but through it all she has persevered. It seemed to be too cruel to imagine that her career would come to an end on the day when she was being celebrated along with her fellow seniors.

Doty was in obvious pain as UConn athletic trainer Rosemary Ragle began to examine her. It didn't take long for Ragle to realize that it was not another issue with Doty's oft-injured left knee. Before long Doty was bending her knee so Ragle to get a closer look at her ankle and her foot and you could almost hear the crowd breath a collective sigh of relief.

The irony of Doty receiving medical treatment on Senior Day was not lost on the fifth-year senior.



"It was more of 'you've got to be kidding me' tape me up and I am going back in," Doty said. "It is the way things work out. The situation was 'really? Is this really going to happen?' I had Rosemary tape me up and take care o me like she always does and got right back on the floor. I had to see Rosemary. Rosemary had to take care of me one last time.

Doty checked out of the game just 1:37 into the game and did not return until there was 9:32 left in the first half.  She played 17 minutes, made both of her field-goal attempts and finished with five points, five rebounds, three assists, a steal and two blocked shots in the 90-30 win despite dealing with some more pain than usual.

"It was definitely a stinger but we got ice on it and it was nothing, we'll get treatment and it will heal," Doty said.

AURIEMMA NOT WORRIED ABOUT COACHING MILESTONES

When UConn coach Geno Auriemma was asked about joining Stanford's Tara VanDerveer as the only Division I women's basketball coaches to win 400 games in one conference, his reaction was little more than an indifferent shrug. But, being the volatile competitor he is, Auriemma used to innocent inquiry as a chance to fire back at critics saying this group can't win the big game and they have a lot to prove when they play at Notre Dame a week from tomorrow.

"We just won a regular season game on Senior Night but obviously if we don't win next Monday night we are not going to win the national championship," Auriemma said. "Today was just a game so a week from this Monday, if we don't win that game there is no chance finishing out the season so we know we have a real busy week coming up for us because that game is going to determine the season and also the future career of a lot of these kids so I don't want to get too excited about tonight."

UConn women's basketball coach Geno Auriemma was not certain of the severity of sophomore guard Brianna Banks' right knee injury.

Banks had to be helped off the court after falling hard on her knee with 10:02 left in the first half. After heading to the locker room to have her knee checked out, she returned to the bench late in the first half. In the second half she wore a protective sleeve on her right leg.

The initial diagnosis is a knee sprain although that does not mean it is not more serious than that since that tends to be the terminology used with knee injuries until MRIs can be performed.


"I thought it was her hip when she first slammed into that kid," Auriemma said. "(UConn athletic trainer) Rosemary (Ragle) and Doc (Tom Trojian) told me that she kind of landed on her knee wrong and somebody hit it at the same time so we probably won't know too much until later on tonight or first thing tomorrow. I think both Brianna Banks and Moriah Jefferson gave us a big lift when they came into the game. The game changed a little bit and for that one little spurt, it only lasted three or four minutes, we really had the game going the way we wanted to."

Banks only played a minute but that was more playing time than starting center Stefanie Dolson.

Dolson, who had started the first 20 games of the season and hadn't missed a game since arriving at UConn, was dealing with flu-like symptoms and just a few minutes before the game was set to start she told her coaches that she wasn't able to go.


"She was good last night was great, went down to pre-game for walk through and she was shaking," Auriemma said. "She had a fever and we thought 'OK, we still have four hours before we play.' Then we showed up here and said 'what do you think?' She said 'no, I can't even stand up.' That was after we put the starting lineups in and comes in and she is all wobbly and said 'I can't do this.'"

There is a certain amount of irony reporting the fact that coming off one of the most physical games of the season, the UConn women's basketball team is close to having its full roster of players available.

Bria Hartley, who played 33 minutes just one day after being upgraded from doubtful to probable due to a sprained ankle, shared game scoring honors in Tuesday's 72-58 win over Louisville with 16 points. Following the game UConn coach Geno Auriemma said that freshman forward Breanna Stewart could have played as well even though she was listed as doubtful.


Hartley, whop also had seven rebounds, looked pretty agile and close to 100 percent racing up and down the court and Auriemma thought she was healthy enough to draw the first dibs on guarding Louisville's star guard Shoni Schimmel.


"(She) just got out there and got moving because if you stand around it kind of gets stiff so it was better that I was out there running around," Hartley said. "I did a good job during the warmup getting myself ready."

Speaking of good jobs, Auriemma credited athletic trainer Rosemary Ragle for getting players ready before it was thought they could return.

That is the case with Stewart. Ragle actually brought some crutches for Stewart on the trip to Marquette and now she seems as if she will able to play against Syracuse (her hometown school) on Saturday.

"She came along a lot faster than we initially thought when she first got hurt," Auriemma said. "Doc (Tom) Trojian said she might not be ready to play until Monday in the Duke game and then he also said unless Rosemary does what she normally does and fix these guys a lot sooner than people think. That is what she did. She looks good and actually could have played tonight if we had to play her but not with the games on Saturday and Monday so I am expecting her fully be to ready to go on Saturday."

There was some concern that Stewart's ankle injury was not going to be a couple of day recovery process.


"Anytime something like that happens when you roll your ankle it is up to the person getting better and how quickly they get better sometimes," Auriemma said. "Breanna Stewart wants to play and she probably made life miserable for Rosemary (Ragle) every day since the injury because she wants to play. I wouldn't be surprised if she was on the phone at 2 o'clock in the morning say 'what do I have to do' because she wants to be out on the floor because she is a great competitor."

LOUISVILLE RIVALRY TO CONTINUE?

Since Jeff Walz was hired at Louisville, there have been some competitive and entertaining games between the Cardinals and Huskies. Following Tuesday night's matchup, Auriemma left the door open for the teams to meet even after the Cardinals depart for the ACC which is not something he has done with other teams exiting the Big East.

"They bring out the best in us," Auriemma said. "Jeff brings out the best in the officials. It is pretty entertaining when we play Louisville. They are a tough group of kids, Jeff coaches that way. Since he has gotten the job he has had incredible success. I don't think he is overly crazy about not being in this league because there are so many story lines in the league we are in right now and he knows he is going to be losing some of that and so do we. It is a great place to go play, they are a good team to play and maybe we keep playing them down the road, who knows."

Even before Kaleena Mosqueda-Lewis was asked to do a routine task by UConn athletic trainer Rosemary Ragle after taking a blow to the head in the Paradise Jam, she knew all was not right. However, she didn't fully comprehend who out of sorts she was until she attempted to name to months backyards.


"The first thing that happens to me is everything was really blurry, noises were really loud, lights hurt my eyes and I felt kind of out of it," Mosqueda-Lewis said after Sunday's practice. "I was sitting on the bench watching the game you could tell something was off. You just feel weird.

"It was bad. I forgot August. I reversed June and July and I think I forgot April. I said 'this is not good.'"

Mosqueda-Lewis, who is UConn's second-leading scorer with an average of 16.2 points per game, missed Wednesday's win over Colgate. She was able to return to practice on Friday and is expected to start in tomorrow's game against Maryland.



Mosqueda-Lewis said this is the third concussion she has suffered but that this was the worst of the three.

"I had one in practice and one in summer," Mosqueda-Lewis said. "This one was probably the worst one we had and the one this summer was pretty bad. I am not so much worried about it, Rosie (Ragle, UConn's athletic trainer) was worried about it. I am letting Rosie worry about that because unless I am breaking something and I can't play for a very long time I am not worried."

Geno Auriemma said that Mosqueda-Lewis, Stefanie Dolson, Kelly Faris, Bria Hartley and Breanna Stewart will start against the Terrapins.

UConn junior guard Bria Hartley was cleared today to get back to basketball drills after missing the last couple of weeks of practice with a sprained left ankle according to a statement from UConn athletic trainer Rosemary Ragle.

Hartley did some functional drills on the side and her participation in Wednesday's practice will be determined by how she feels.

Hartley's status for Friday's exhibition game against Indiana (Pa.) will be determined by how she feels and how much she is able to practice in the next couple of days.

Not wanting minor aches and pains to turn into something worse led to UConn holding out guards Bria Hartley and Moriah Jefferson at Tuesday's practice.

Hartley, a junior All-American, first hurt her left ankle while helping the U.S. win the gold medal at the FIBA 3x3 World Championships in late August and when the pain did not subside, the decision was to shut down Hartley for another a week to give her ankle time to rest.


"The last game we played that night (on Aug. 25), I hurt it late in the (quarterfinal) game," Hartley said. "I came out right away and I played the next day and it was OK. It hurt a little bit but I had it taped. When I came back here, it was all bruised. I went to see Rosemary (Ragle, UConn's athletic trainer) and showed it to her. It seemed to be getting better at first. I still played on it and after a couple of weeks it started bothering me more. I talked to Rosemary again, I got it in a boot and got an MRI. There's nothing torn, there's just a lot of swelling and stuff and irritation of the ligament. I just sat out for a week or so just to give it some rest. I think the main thing is I didn't rest it and that was the main thing."

Hartley admitted that missing even one practice is tough for her to deal with.

"I am always the type of person that I always want to be doing something," Hartley said, "I am a really active person so sitting there is practice I just want to jump into a drill or something but I am still here and I know when my teammates are here working hard and we are down players it is hard. These drills all the running we have to do is really tiring. I am doing the best I can to encourage them and stay involved at practice."

Jefferson, part of the highly-touted freshman class, suffered a pulled groin muscle earlier this week and sat out Tuesday's practice. While Hartley could miss a couple more practices, Jefferson figures to be good to go at the Huskies' next practice.

"It's early in the season so I don't have a problem sitting out before I do something that is really serious," Jefferson said.

GENO REACTS TO UPDATE ON PRACTICE FACILITY
UConn coach Geno Auriemma was asked for his take on the fact that work constructing the new basketball practice facility can begin now that UConn has received $24 million in donations for the $32 million project.


"I haven't heard yet what the date is that they are starting the actual date of the project but from a player's standpoint I think it gives us a lot more flexibility," Auriemma said. "It gives us an opportunity to practice at times that are convenient to us and not when they are convenient for the building. We get the chance to maximize whatever talents our players have basketball wise, academically as far as anything else it is just the wave of the future, that is the way everybody is going. I think it will be a great addition for us because we need to space, a place where we can practice that works for us and their players, kids that come late to practice because we have to practice at a certain time."

As Caroline Doty has had to deal with yet another torn ACL, her teammates have been incredibly supportive but they are not the only ones.

When Doty met with the media on Wednesday, she was quick to credit assistant coach Shea Ralph, herself a victim of a multitude of serious knee injuries, as well as trainer Rosemary Ragle for helping her as much emotionally as physically on the long road to recovery.

"It gets better every week. During individuals with Shea, she says it looks better than last week and as long as I keep hearing that and knowing that, I will continue to get better. It is still a while to that first game so I have to keep that in the back of my mind too. If I can't do something this week, I still have next week. I am going to keep working at it, get in the gym and make as many shots as I can and working on my weaknesses so I am ready for the games come November."

As for Ragle, here is what Doty had to say.

"She's helped me keep the eye on the prize and I commend her for doing everything that she does, kind of keeping that drive within me, competing every day. Rehab this year was more of being competitive with myself, trying to push myself and get stronger at the same time. I have seen a difference through the past year because of rehab and the intense weight training.

Also, here is what she said about whether she will apply for a fifth season of eligibility, something she is eligible to do because she missed the entire 2010-11 season.

"I really haven't thought about it," Doty said. "I am going to take it day by day. I am going to focus on this season. We have a great schedule, our goal is to go to the Final Four and win a national championship and that is the main focus for now."

The Huskies scrimmages briefly, 10-15 minutes maximum and I was out there for some of it. A couple of impressions. First, Brianna Banks may not have the same range as Kaleena Mosqueda-Lewis on her jumper but she is not far behind. Also, in the brief time I was out there I saw Bria Hartley drive aggressively to the basket more than I did in any practice I watched last year. If she adds that to her game on a regular season, she may end up being close to an impossible matchup for opposing teams. Hartley was also playing mostly off the ball which I see happening quite a but this year with Doty returning.

As Caroline Doty works her and her surgically-repaired knee way back into shape, there is no such thing as a "minor" milestone.

A couple weeks back the rising sophomore guard was thrilled when she was told she could start running and sprinting. Next up is getting the OK to start cutting, probably in the next couple of weeks. The hope is that she will be able to start playing basketball again by either late August or early September.

"So far so good," Doty said Wednesday during a break in the rehab process. "No complaints at all, it feels great. We kind of go week by week with progressions, every two weeks and go by month marks. I am almost at the fifth month mark and we were really concentrating on jogging, landing right. Now we are working more on plyo (plyometrics), lot of single leg stuff as well as keeping up with the strength, trying to get all the muscles back and working at that. In gym, I'm standing in place and shooting, trying to get my reps up, (doing) a lot of foul shooting and making sure my knee doesn't go in when I bend it to jump. I can't do any cutting yet so I am working on the form and getting that back."

Doty was accompanied by UConn women's basketball trainer Rosemary Ragle who has been stressing patience with Doty even though Caroline wants to be back playing basketball again in the worst way.

"We talked about with her surgeon and because it is her second ACL (tear), it is a different type of graft that it used, we have a different type of time frame," Ragle said. "We can go a little slower and be a little more conservative. Normally people with straight ACLs are going to be back in five or six months. With Caroline, we are looking more at the seven-month mark. At six months (likely somewhere between mid to late July or early August) is where she is going to start some 1-on-1 drills with her teammates, then she will go 3 on 3 and then she will play half-court 5 on 5 so we are looking at having her be a full go by the seventh month."

Doty is taking a biology course in the first summer session and has been taking in some of the pick-up games featuring her UConn teammates. She has been impressed by the amount of work Lorin Dixon had done on her perimeter game as well as the physical fitness of Kaili McLaren who Doty said is working relentlessly on the stationary bike and other cardio machines.

Was also able to speak to Tiffany Hayes who said she (along with Maya Moore and Tina Charles) will be returning to Colorado Springs for the World University Games training camp. The three Huskies are 14 finalists for the U.S. squad and two players will need to be cut to 12 before the team leaves for Belgrade, Serbia. Hayes, who is taking two classes in the first summer session, has only one regret from the summer - she is struggling to find the time to return to Florida to visit her family. Hayes said she did have the chance to chat with UConn incoming freshman Kelly Faris during the USA Basketball trials in May and when she did get to watch the Under-19 trials when she was in Colorado Springs, she was impressed with Faris' game.

Faris' arrival in Storrs is still to be determined. She is currently in training with the Indiana team which will play the Kentucky squad in the annual North/South Classic. Faris is one of 14 candidates for the U.S. team set to compete in the FIBA U-19 World Championship. She has to be in Colorado Springs by July 9 and if she is one of 12 players named to the team, she likely wouldn't be able to come to Storrs until early August since the U19 World Championship will not wrap up until Aug. 2.

Also ran into new UConn assistant coach Marissa Moseley at Gampel. She seems like a pretty nice kid. She has already found a place to live and before long will be hitting the recruiting trail.