Notebook: Christyn Williams “100 percent” after offseason elbow surgery

After undergoing an ulnar nerve transposition and scope on her left elbow surgery in July, junior guard Christyn Williams declared herself “100 percent” for the start of official practice.

“It gets sore sometimes but that’s normal,” she said.

Williams said her elbow started bothering her consistently in January and continued throughout the end of the season.

“It was like a sharp pain,” she said of the injury. “It was a nerve thing so it would come and go. It was really weird. The doctor told me it’s usually a baseball injury, so I don’t know how the heck I got it.”

Even with it being an issue on her shooting arm, Williams brushed off any notion that it affected her play.

“I’m not going to use that as an excuse for my shooting percentage or whatever,” she said. “Things happen. I think my shooting was mental anyway so I don’t think that really bothered me that much.”

Once the offseason began, Williams decided to take care of it so that she’d be fully healthy for the start of the 2021-22 campaign.

“I’m not gonna have any other time to really have surgery, so I had to do it in the summer,” she said. “I’m so glad that I did it, it wasn’t a very invasive surgery and I’m back. It was a two month recovery, so it was like perfect timing.”

Injury updates

Williams wasn’t the only one trying to get healthy over the offseason.

In April, Paige Bueckers underwent right ankle surgery to repair an osteochondral defect which kept her out of summer workouts. After she returned to the court, Bueckers hurt her wrist but is “fine”, according to Auriemma.

Meanwhile, Mir McLean continues to deal with tendinitis in her knee while Aubrey Griffin and Saylor Poffenbarger are both dealing with back issues. In the last two weeks, Dorka Juhász has been battling a quad/leg injury and a few days ago, Aaliyah Edwards turned an ankle after stepping on someone’s foot.

Amari DeBerry did not participate in the portion of practice open to media and was instead doing sprints along the sidelines, though it wasn’t clear if that was injury-related or not. Caroline Ducharme also landed awkwardly on a layup and grabbed at her leg but received only brief attention from the trainer and promptly returned to the drill.

Secret scrimmage scheduled

In addition to the one exhibition game against Division II Fort Hays State on Sunday, Nov. 7, UConn will also play a closed-door scrimmage against another Division I team. Auriemma couldn’t give any details about who the Huskies will play or what date it will happen but it’ll be before the Fort Hays game. He’ll be allowed to discuss it afterwards, though.