According to UConn WBB Weekly BOTH Ice and Morgan can claim a red-shirt year if they go the rest of the schedule without playing!
I'm not clear on what this reported "redshirting ability" of Brady is supposed to mean. Brady
definitely has eligibility to play next season,
regardless of whether she plays any more this season or not, but that has nothing to do with an ability to medical redshirt this season because she has no redshirt seasons left, medical or otherwise. Let me clarify by paraphrasing various NCAA bylaws.
Rule 1: Players get 4 seasons of eligibility.
Rule 2: Players have 5 calendar years to use up their 4 seasons of eligibility (the "5-year window").
Rule 3: A player can take off
one entire season from team play ("redshirt") for any reason, such as a medical reason, or no reason at all, and still get 4 seasons of play because she has the 5-year window. Non-medical redshirts are very common in football but rare in basketball.
Rule 4: If a player plays one femtosecond in a game, she has used (burned) one entire season of eligibility.
Rule 5: However, a player who plays in some games and then suffers a documented season-ending injury or illness won't burn a season of eligibility if: (i) she plays only in games in the first half of the regular season, and (ii) she doesn't play in more than 30% of the regular season games. UConn's regular season is 31 games. This is colloquially called a "medical hardship year" or, collquially, a "medical redshirt."
Important to note: Rule 2 still applies to Rule 3 and Rule 5 redshirting. Meaning: the total of playing seasons + redshirt seasons cannot exceed the 5-year window.
Brady took off the entire 2022-23 season. This happened to be for medical reasons, but could have been for any reason. This was a redshirt year, and it counts toward her 5-year window.
She's played in three seasons 2023-24, 2024-25 and 2025-26 (this season: 23 minutes).
In sum, Brady
has already had a redshirt year (2022-23) plus three playing seasons. Thus,
she has one playing season of eligibility left in the 5-year window—next season. This is so
no matter what she does in the remainder of this season,
play or not play. However, she cannot get any additional playing seasons after that because her 5-year window will close after next season. In other words, Brady can't get a second redshirt year for her early season injury this year because that would be giving her a 6-year window.
-- EXCEPT --
Some players
have gotten a sixth year (e.g., Jamie Carey, Ali Patberg) by petitioning the Committee on Student-Athlete Reinstatement on the basis of some extraordinary medical or other hardship ground. But it's very rare.
Simple, huh? This all summarizes less than one page out of the 429 pages of the 2025-26 NCAA DI Manual.