Ayanna Patterson's recovery

[Dugway]

What is known about Ayanna Patterson's recovery? Any word on her availability for the first game of next season?

She apparently had undergone a series of two separate surgeries to repair a "Patellar Tendonitis Injury" (Jumper's Knee), the second of which was back around Christmas. I am not a physician, but from what I understand the Patellar Tendon is the one that connects the kneecap to the tibia. The tibia is the larger of the two lower leg bones, the shinbone that connects the knee to the ankle. Strains of this Patellar tendon apparently can be chronic and reaggravating is not necessarily uncommon. I would think that she would want to give that injury the fullest amount of healing time and rehabilitation before she would attempt to play on it, but I just do not understand if that is measured in weeks, or in months, or in years?

 

[Geew1992]

There has been no word. I went to the Big East Championship game. She was there, but didn't participate in pre-game. The only one that did was Jana. I follow her on instagram, but there hasn't been any signs of her working out. Then again, no one has been working out. Hopefully we will get some work soon

 

[Charliebball]

My daughter suffered from both patellar tendinitis and a torn meniscus during her basketball career.........her patellar tendinitis was alleviated through physical therapy based on the exercises in the alt-med book Beating Patellar Tendonitis by Martin Koban which uses techniques not practiced by most physical therapists........if Ayanna needed surgery just for patellar tendonitis it must have been a very severe case........more likely she had additional knee issues that required cleaning up........hopefully she should be fully healed by the start of next season......

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[YSRFrisbee]

Sorry this reply doesn’t directly address the questions in your post, but…

I am super excited for Ayanna’s return. She is an exceptional athlete with tremendous gifts! Like most freshmen, it seemed like she was afraid to make mistakes at times, but once she has her confidence…watch out! I hope she shows everyone why she’ll be a force on the court this fall!

 

[hoopsfan22]

The team is back on campus for summer workouts in 4 1/2 weeks, so we'll start getting trickles of news again, and I'm sure someone's going to ask about the status of the players recovering from injuries/surgery.

 

[donalddoowop]

Sorry this reply doesn’t directly address the questions in your post, but…

I am super excited for Ayanna’s return. She is an exceptional athlete with tremendous gifts! Like most freshmen, it seemed like she was afraid to make mistakes at times, but once she has her confidence…watch out! I hope she shows everyone why she’ll be a force on the court this fall!

I think she will.

 

[Dugway]

The only published article I was able to find that discussed Ayanna indicated that she had the Patellar Tendon injury first while playing in High School. The assumptions were that she probably just played on the injury throughout the remainder of her high school career, and likely continued to play on it throughout her freshman year at UConn. At some point it became so bad that she was unable to continue and then surgery(s). We know that she redshirted and missed her entire Sophomore season; she traveled with the team for their pre-season European games last August, but I do not think that she played any.

 

[Longtime fan]

Sorry this reply doesn’t directly address the questions in your post, but…

I am super excited for Ayanna’s return. She is an exceptional athlete with tremendous gifts! Like most freshmen, it seemed like she was afraid to make mistakes at times, but once she has her confidence…watch out! I hope she shows everyone why she’ll be a force on the court this fall!

She may be an exception athlete. But none of that surfaced during her freshman year. She was hesitant and a bit lost. I tend to think it was due to her nagging patella problems. She was afraid to put her body in " burst" mode ( i.e. go full out all the time ), and you can't play Division 1 basketball in neutral. If her second surgery was in December, I don't think she'll be ready to work at full go until December. Which means, at best, she'll be ready to see the court in February some time. And that assumes no setbacks of any kind. This suggests the need ( as we all know ) for more depth in the front court. Not sure how that works with Beers now off the table. It is not unrealistic to expect Patterson to miss most, if not all, of the next season.

 

[Rowdy831]

This is a serious injury for a basketball player and the only consideration for Ayanna is that she is 100% healed and ready to go before she attempts her return to the court. Hopefully when summer workouts start she will be using crutches and getting her rehab started. I love her game and I hope next season we will see her play with no pain.

 

[Jewels]

This is a serious injury for a basketball player and the only consideration for Ayanna is that she is 100% healed and ready to go before she attempts her return to the court. Hopefully when summer workouts start she will be using crutches and getting her rehab started. I love her game and I hope next season we will see her play with no pain.

I think she has been off crutches for a while

 

[Dugway]

Yuh, I didn't notice any limping or anything like that while she was on the sidelines during the March Madness tournament games, but of course you only see brief glimpses of them. My hopes are that all of that trauma part is well behind her. Almost certainly, she, as well as all of the medical staff working with her are doing everything necessary to assure that her knee problem is corrected, and all turns out well for her. I mean she is not an offensive lineman for petes sake (guess how I know about that!)

I just do not know what the healing period would typically be for the patellar tendon surgery (two of them apparently), and then associated rehabilitation, and then active practice and finally full contact gameplay. In this day in age of medical advances, we tend to predict that a broken bone will take 6 to 10 weeks to heal up and have that player back in action again, depending upon the bone that was broken. A torn ACL on the other hand will be 12 to 15 months before a player would be in games again. I think that Jana's ruptured Achillies Tendon was predicted to be more or less a year long process to get her back.

 

[RockyMTblue2]

It is all speculation because we do not the nature of the injuries that required surgery. I totally severed my patellar tendon which is about as drastic as you can get and noncomparable. However, if the tendon was operated on it is a bummer. Tendons are not known for their rich blood supply, which means they are slow healing. Slow heeling is conducive to scar tissue formation and calcium deposits (bone spurs) and getting full range of motion back is no fun.

 

[Bone Dog]

I have high hopes for Ayanna as a talent who can contribute to the team. My reason for thinking this is mainly based on the 7 minutes she played against Monica Czinano two years ago, This is a tiny window to view her through, but as a freshman playing against a senior at the top of her game, she held her own. Together she and Aaliyah held Czinano to 8 points on 3-7 shooting. She was quick and strong and didn't back down against a top post player.

 

[Majorthreat]

I have high hopes for Ayanna as a talent who can contribute to the team. My reason for thinking this is mainly based on the 7 minutes she played against Monica Czinano two years ago, This is a tiny window to view her through, but as a freshman playing against a senior at the top of her game, she held her own. Together she and Aaliyah held Czinano to 8 points on 3-7 shooting. She was quick and strong and didn't back down against a top post player.

I hope she does well. I can remember she fouled an awful lot when she was in so her minutes weren't that great. I hope she has developed some touch and savvy around the rim. An 8-10 foot jumper wouldn't hurt either.

 

[visitingcock]

Was anything done during her season off to correct or improve the vision in her right eye? ( I don’t know if anything can be done.)

 

[Bald Husky]

I believe Ayanna Paterson can be the X factor for next years team. We actually saw very little of her two years ago, but besides the fouling trouble, she did show signs of leaping ability, shot blocking ability, and she also knocked down a few 8-10 foot shots. Hopefully she will be cleared to get some work done this summer to get back into game shape and work on her finishing at the rim. If Ayanna becomes the player Geno said she was than we can forget about Beers and feel good about our "Bigs" situation. Most of the talk is about Jana, Ice, and Sarah, with little talk about Ayanna. If she can play like we know she can than we will be really good at all positions, and we will be hard to stop.

 

[Bone Dog]

If Ayanna becomes the player Geno said she was than we can forget about Beers and feel good about our "Bigs" situation.

My thinking exactly. Events conspired against her last season and cost her an opportunity to get a ton of game experience. But if she can reenter the roster in roughly game shape her virtues are considerable. She is a very quick strong kid who runs the floor very well. She can be a good defender and a great rebounder. Geno doesn’t need her to be a primary scorer. But those other talents will make her an excellent partner to Jana in the frontcourt.

 

[LwrcasefaN]

Was anything done during her season off to correct or improve the vision in her right eye? ( I don’t know if anything can be done.)

My impression was that she's been playing with that (whatever it is) for a long time so I don't think it's an issue.

 

[Jim]

My concern about Ayanna (and Aubrey) is that her competitive advantage largely comes from her athleticism and the injury to her leg hampers her greatest asset on the court. Azzi and Caroline rely more on their shooting strokes and less on athleticism alone, so once healthy enough to participate (and shoot) they ought to be able to contribute more quickly. Jana seems to rely on her size, her shooting, and somewhat less on athleticism (plus she has had the most time to recover from her injury), so amongst those injured five I think she will be ready to go when next season starts. The others I think will take longer to be ready to go.

 

[oldhusky]

I think the expectations for Ayanna are very difficult to have much conviction over for several reasons. First is some have mentioned this injury could be a chronic condition, or similar to what Morgan Tuck had. If that is true, you can't just assume get the surgery, do the rehab, and then back to normal. It could be career altering and a threat to her career. But we know few details about the surgery, condition, or how much it affected her play her freshmen season.

That season she started ok and then went downhill over the course of the season. I don't remember for how many games, but pretty early in the year her PER was around 20, and by the end of the year it had dropped to around 11 or 12. That of course is just the opposite of what usually happens with freshmen, but apparently the knee was getting worse over the season, and may have not been right even at the beginning.

So the optimist might conclude her first season was ruined by injury, and we have not yet seen what she can do if healthy, maybe even at the start of her first year. Combine that with hope that the surgery alleviates all the issues and maybe she still achieves what we expected from a player ranked that high.

The other side is her knee is an ongoing concern and she may never be the player/prospect she once was because it is a chronic condition. The range of possible career paths is quite wide IMO, largely because we don't know the health details that much, or how much her play we have seen was affected by the knee. Following her stages of recovery over the summer, and maybe Geno's comments on how she is doing may reveal some before we see her back on the court again. Fingers crossed.

 

[WiseWillie]

I'm surprised that this thread was even begun nevertheless winding out so long without HuskyNan stopping it as pure conjecture and non-productive. If I recall, there was a question raised about injury status regarding Caroline ta couple of weeks ago that was shut down with the warning that the Boneyard should not speculate on injuries. Well? What is this thread but that?

 

[The CDR-Ret]

Sorry this reply doesn’t directly address the questions in your post, but…

I am super excited for Ayanna’s return. She is an exceptional athlete with tremendous gifts! Like most freshmen, it seemed like she was afraid to make mistakes at times, but once she has her confidence…watch out! I hope she shows everyone why she’ll be a force on the court this fall!

I agree based on her 3x3 gold medal play as U19 USA team at the FIBA worlds...

 

[donalddoowop]

I believe Ayanna and Brady are going to surprise a lot of people next season in a positive way.

 

[Cuango]

Personally, I think people are being way too paranoid about our injured players chances of a full recovery. I will concede Caroline as a special case with her head injuries but everyone else, I’m just going to assume will be fine. The success rate of these kinds of surgeries is extremely high these days especially when performed by the caliber of surgeon that would be operating on UConn players. Jana especially is one where I’m constantly reading these comments about her achilles surgery. There are lots of examples of top athletes who have had the same injury as her and who have returned to play at a very high level. Didn’t Stewie just win the MVP after returning from this same injury? Sure, I realize it would be better if the surgery had never happened but the success rate on these surgeries is high enough to make me fairly confident that our players will be fine. I mean, either they will or they won’t and I’ve seen enough successes to warrant being optimistic, which makes for a much better off season as a Husky fan.

 

[uconnfan68]

I believe Ayanna Paterson can be the X factor for next years team. We actually saw very little of her two years ago, but besides the fouling trouble, she did show signs of leaping ability, shot blocking ability, and she also knocked down a few 8-10 foot shots. Hopefully she will be cleared to get some work done this summer to get back into game shape and work on her finishing at the rim. If Ayanna becomes the player Geno said she was than we can forget about Beers and feel good about our "Bigs" situation. Most of the talk is about Jana, Ice, and Sarah, with little talk about Ayanna. If she can play like we know she can than we will be really good at all positions, and we will be hard to stop.

I honestly never saw those glimpses of leaping ability or shot-blocking. I'm sure she was hurt the entire time. After watching her dunk videos, I was actually surprised at how little lift she had. The only time she was involved with shot-blocking was when kids were blocking her. I hope she's fully recovered, or will be soon.