STORRS, Conn. _ With the UConn women's first exhibition set for a week from Sunday, and their first regular-season game scheduled for the Sunday after that, the Huskies still have a major question mark surrounding their team: Will the NCAA rule Evina Westbrook, a transfer from Tennessee, eligible to play for the 2019-20 season?
Unfortunately for the Huskies, it's a question that, as the past has shown, might not get answered until the last minute.
"Sending a waiver to the NCAA is like making a phone call or writing a letter to the DMV," UConn coach Geno Auriemma said Tuesday at practice. "It's anybody's guess when you're going to get a response."
While Auriemma "feels good" about the prospect of her eligibility, the UConn coaching staff has still had to juggle giving the junior enough looks in practice so that she's prepared if eligible, but not too many if deemed ineligible and the Huskies are without her.
Westbrook, a guard who led Tennessee in scoring last season, would provide another offensive weapon for a UConn team that, alongside returning starters Christyn Williams and Crystal Dangerfield, already has much backcourt depth. But with Westbrook still limited at times in practice as she returns to full health following an offseason knee surgery, Auriemma is still working on figuring out exactly how Westbrook could best fit alongside Williams and Dangerfield.
"In practice, she's still not 100 percent from surgery," Auriemma said. "We haven't seen what she can do. ... I don't think we're going to figure that one out until she's been here a couple months and after she's practiced and gotten 100% healthy. Right now she's not there."
Westbrook says that while her knee is holding up pretty well, she still will take off a drill if it gets aggravated. Getting readjusted to the full-throttle of high-level basketball conditioning, running, and pounding has also been a work in progress, and there are still some movements that she's not able to do quite yet. But Westbrook is optimistic that she'll be where she wants to be physically by the start of the season.
Otherwise, the transition into a new program has gone well for Westbrook, especially as she's been smoothly brought into the fold by her teammates.
"(The team's) been keeping me level-headed through it all, just encouraging me. They ask me questions every day like 'have you heard anything? have you heard anything? how's your knee doing?,' all that type of stuff," Westbrook said. "It really just keeps me in good spirits every day."
