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Message: [QUOTE="Tonyc, post: 4135923, member: 73"] Well we have 1 game Louisville until Marquette on Dec 29. Thats a long time to get ready and get back on track and help cure our injuries. Im thinking and hoping Griff, Nika and Azzi will be back by then. The layoff is allowing time for them to get back on track. There was talk about Griff playing last week and that didnt happen so here we are with another 7 days before LVille. Her return is encouraging. Nika was suppose to be out 3 weeks which tells me if all goes right she could be back. Im thinking we were told it will take a couple of weeks for Azzi would bring us to Dec 15 and about that time we should know if shes ready to go. Im hoping everybody heals and is 100% healthy and theyre 100% ready to go against LVille and if theyre not at least we have time to practice together to get ready without everybody. That leaves Paige and I would think the earliest we hear anything is the end of February. Im hoping shes healthy and ready to go. We're all concerned where we're at as a team. Over this next 7 day layoff and with the possible return of Griff Nika and Azzi we should be in much better shape. As a team playing without them we are adjusting and showed improvement playing without them against UCLA. That was a huge hurdle to get over mentally. We now know we can do it without them and with this layoff we will only get stronger. The layoff gives us time to learn to play together. With that said this time off will only help and by us time to learn to play together. I talked to a few fans and their thoughts were we would have a problem winning without our injured players being able to play. Now it looks like we may have 2 or 3 of them back which is encouraging. With 4 key players out we have been able to give others more playtime and gain more experience. There were some bright spots Sunday and thats going to pay dividends for the rest of the season. I think we're going to have more experienced depth which will allow Geno to play more kids with out fear of them not knowing how to play within his system. Moving forward, more players will see more minutes then they wouldve if these injuries didnt occur. We will be a stronger unit with depth. So now we wait to hear from the doctors and coaches as to when the kids will be healthy enough to play and how long it will take to get them up to speed. In the mean time we have time to get ready for Lville and I think we will be ready and playing better then we did in the past 2 games. We have height and Liv and Dorka have shown us some much improved signs. Our bigs are playing big and that is something we have lacked. We have big games coming up with Lville Marquette and Depaul followed by Oregon South Carolina and Tenn through Feb 6. We've got time to get ready and although we are a different team without Paige we will become a better team imo when she finally comes back whether its this season or next. We are Paige-less now but the future looks brighter. [/QUOTE]

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