Hmmm. IMO, CT really missed Griffin's athleticism and defense. They also missed Ducharme's offense, although she has been a defensive liability who fouled a bit in past games.
Fudd and Patterson have combined for 41 minutes of court time against the Gamecocks, and for 3 pts on 1-3 shooting, 1 rebound, 1 steal, 3 blocked shots, 4 fouls and 3 turnovers. Cannot say that either would have impacted the game in any way positively for the Huskies, without additional data to go by. Oh, and Fudd did contribute the infamous audio meme from Auriemma: "Shoot The G%DD#^n Ball!!!"
El Alfy looks to be a highly talented player for CT, but so did DeBerry out of high school. In any case, all we really know to date that El Alfy would bring to the table is pure potential and possibility, nothing else.
Beyond that for example, all the players beyond Griffin and possibly Ducharme to a degree would have brought - or have already proven to be able to bring - would be the 5 fouls that each bring to the game, to save the starters from their fouls, as well as bring minutes of rest for the starters to keep them fresher in the late stages of the game. They haven't shown much more than that.
But fouls and minutes were already available there on CT's bench, in DeBerry and Bettencourt. DeBerry as mentioned before was a former 5-star McD AA who is now an upperclassman at CT. SHE couldn't have gotten onto the floor for CT? Bettencourt is a sophomore who played in 25 gms last season, with 1 start. SHE wasn't now able to fill in at least for a little while to give starters some needed rest?
As it ended up, both Connecticut and South Carolina had 9 players available to play the game - the Gamecocks played all 9, while the Huskies played only 7 of their 9. Walker has averaged about as many minutes per game this season as both DeBerry and Bettencourt, and she played minutes in both the 1st and 2nd halves.
It's one thing for a TCU-type situation, or a team that has so many injuries that they have to hold mid-season tryouts for walk-ons and soccer players to join their roster to maintain a minimum roster of warm bodies. It's another to play games where you have legitimate basketball players that your staff recruited out of high school, and have had seasons with the team, sitting and watching the team play and never take to the court while healthy, and you complain about lack of playing depth. It's a very unfortunate situation to have to be in, but it didn't have to be as bad as it ultimately was.
By the way, in South Carolina's first-ever win over Connecticut in 2019-20, CT only played 6 players that game. In 2014-15, CT lost in overtime to Stanford on the road, and only played 7 players for that game - in OVERTIME. They supposedly had 12-13 players on that roster. Paige and Edwards weren't even in high school then. What were the personnel situations for those teams?
