Really? I'm not seeing it. I'm not sure we win last night without her. And what about the St. Joe's game?
She's taking charge; it's her time.
But that's why I feel we can't lose. If not KML then some other emerges to lead us to the promised land.
On game shape - preseason really starts in August when the kids come back and start playing pick-up games, have individual work outs and training sessions with Rosemary so it is about 70 days of getting into shape. The season begins and you are then actually playing games as well as the other stuff. Players sometimes have minor problems that knock them out of games for a week and it takes a few days to get it back together when whatever went wrong clears up. For Kaleena, that is not the pattern - she got the seventy days, but then had to miss a month when her arm condition prevented her from doing a lot of stuff she normally would do - yes she could ride a stationary bike and do other similar things but that is just not the same and protecting the arm from jolts was a big restriction on the type of conditioning work she could do. She comes back, starts getting stamina back and rhythm and then comes down with mono. That knocks her out again and this time it is three weeks of NO activity - no stationary bike, no cardio - even walking around campus is something that should be limited to essential trips.
That amount of time is not something that you can really recover from in a month. Can she play 40 minutes straight - sure, but fatigue is real and she will not regain that stamina fully until next year. She is playing great basketball, but she is not playing at 100% right now and will not be through the end of the season.
This has been true for other players on the current team. Bria had a terrible struggle last year. Banks was playing pretty well this year recovering from her injury until she went down with a chronic ankle problem that really derailed her and from which she hasn't fully 'recovered'. And some 'complain' about Kiah's progress over her years here, but forget that this year is her first fully healthy year at Uconn (she missed one game early with an ankle issue which thankfully was minor.) Her previous years were a progression of minor problems, nothing serious, but enough to disrupt any kind of flow to her seasons.
One of the things people forget is conditioning involves nutrition - athletes burn more calories than average people so they eat a lot more. But the process of regulating that intake when they have to shut down for a few weeks is really tough. Your mind/body becomes used to the intake and does not immediately react to the decreased need, so it takes will power and constant attention. There is a reason that a lot of elite athletes become overweight when they retire. For an athlete in season, it is even tougher, because it is just temporary and you have to change immediately, you can't ease in to the process.
