UConn ahead Aaliyah Edwards impressed by Huskies legends

STORRS, Conn. — If Gampel Pavilion teems with legacy, the adjoining Werth Household UConn Basketball Champions Heart overflows. Past the doorway adorned with glass-encased {hardware}, Aaliyah Edwards sits beside a court docket framed by banners celebrating first-team All-Individuals, Olympic gold medalists, nationwide gamers of the 12 months and NCAA nationwide championships.

Edwards, in a black crewneck, sweatpants and Nikes, sits on a padded chair from one in every of UConn’s Ultimate 4 appearances. She wears silver-link and crucifix necklaces, her purple and gold braids down. The 6-foot-3 senior ahead has virtually lived beneath these banners, the names Rebecca Lobo, Kara Wolters and Tina Charles among the many greats reminding her of not solely what is feasible however, maybe, anticipated.

“What I’ve confronted right here,” Edwards says, “it isn’t for the weak.”

It is an unprecedented quantity of success in a single place, and the legacies have loomed particularly giant this season. The UConn ladies haven’t raised a nationwide championship banner since 2016, and there was optimism coming into the season about what a full and wholesome UConn roster may obtain. However that outlook was shortly dashed.

For the reason that fall, UConn has misplaced 5 gamers for the season. Jana El Alfy tore her Achilles. Azzi Fudd went down with a torn ACL and meniscus. Ayanna Patterson had patellar tendinitis surgical procedure. Aubrey Griffin tore an ACL, and most just lately, Caroline Ducharme’s head and neck accidents ended her season early. The departures have meant extra minutes for freshmen KK Arnold, Ashlynn Shade and Ice Brady — and extra consideration on Edwards.

Edwards is embracing this second, welcoming the problem. After Wednesday night time’s 67-34 victory towards Seton Corridor — making coach Geno Auriemma the third faculty basketball coach, males’s or ladies’s, to achieve 1,200 wins — Edwards was the final Husky remaining on the court docket on the XL Heart in Hartford. She tossed tiny foam basketballs into the gang, hitting her mother, Jackie, almost 10 rows from the court docket completely in her arms. She posed for photographs with younger followers and took selfies with peace indicators aloft. She even apologized to women from an area youth basketball workforce as a result of she did not have extra time.

She’s averaging 17.7 factors and eight.8 rebounds this season — and is on a notable scorching streak the previous 4 outings, pouring in a mean of 24 factors and 11.5 rebounds per sport. She had a career-high 33 factors plus 13 rebounds towards St. John’s and is recent off a Large East Participant of the Week nod.

Sunday shall be one more second of measure for Edwards, whom teammate Paige Bueckers calls the Huskies’ “anchor.” No. 11 UConn visits No. 1 South Carolina (2 p.m. ET on ESPN), the place they will face an undefeated Gamecocks workforce with out high scorer and dominant low-post presence Kamilla Cardoso, a 6-foot-7 senior who will miss the sport whereas she’s with the Brazilian nationwide workforce for an Olympic qualifying occasion.

“I need to be among the finest, ever since I used to be youthful,” Edwards says. “That is the aggressive spirit in me. To be surrounded by greatness on this fitness center each day is wonderful, however you possibly can’t apologize for doing good issues. To be acknowledged, be amongst corridor of famers, it is a blessing I am very grateful for.”

AALIYAH EDWARDS WASN’T known as generational, regardless of debuting for Canada’s senior nationwide workforce at age 16, nor did her faculty dedication cease U.S. sports activities media in its tracks. She acknowledged she did not understand UConn was the primary time she spoke with Auriemma. Regardless of 74 scholarship affords, UConn was her solely official go to. She dedicated earlier than leaving campus.

She’d grown up on Lake Ontario in Kingston, Canada. Her brothers have been obsessive about basketball and Kobe Bryant. Older brother Jermaine and her mom coached her on the youth circuit for the Kingston Affect. Edwards and Jermaine would play one-on-one for hours on the close by Royal Army Academy.

“Our exercises have been so intense,” Edwards says. “I might be 10 doing stuff a 13-year-old ought to be. I [was] utilizing a drugs ball at 8. This point in time you will see it, however again then it was like, ‘Oh my God, I am not a man, why are you making an attempt to coach me like one?’ Off the court docket, he is my huge brother. We step on, he is my coach.”

Jermaine, then greater than a decade older than Aaliyah, was a ahead for St. Lawrence School in Kingston with Aaliyah’s different brother, Jahmal. Jermaine was the workforce’s rookie of the 12 months and workforce MVP in consecutive seasons. However his greatest challenge was Aaliyah. After these intense coaching classes, they’d seize ice cream, perhaps watch a film.

“Or watch Kobe movie,” Edwards says. “We might do stuff that may take my thoughts off basketball, a reward for placing within the work, [so it’s not] 24/8 — sorry, 24/7. Bought 24 and eight in my head.”

Edwards led Frontenac Secondary College to metropolis, regional and provincial titles.

Marlo Davis, the director of males’s and girls’s basketball at Crestwood Preparatory School in Toronto and Edwards’ highschool coach, says he noticed her play at a event at their college and steered inviting Edwards to an all-star sport.

“I acquired the chance to teach her,” Davis says. “The story that Jackie tells is that as quickly as they acquired within the automobile, [Aaliyah’s dad, Stanford] mentioned, ‘We discovered the coach for her.'”

Leaving Kingston to maneuver in with a number household for her junior and senior years in Toronto meant a “robust dialog” along with her mother and father.

“Three hours away once you’re 14, 15, just isn’t a very good factor,” she says. “I lived with teammates, I’d FaceTime my mother and father rather a lot. It was robust being kinda alone at first, however I performed with my provincial workforce, and we have been gone for a month for coaching camps, so I used to be used to with the ability to adapt. I constructed my circle of relatives.”

Davis says it was clear instantly she was particular.

“She’s only a skilled in every thing she did,” he says. “She’d are available each morning at 7 and faculty began at 8:45. She’d be within the cafeteria with purple headphones, doing schoolwork, taking good care of enterprise. She’d be cheering on 12-year-olds in fitness center class, get stretching began a half hour earlier than apply. She pressured everybody, together with me, to step as much as one other stage.”

In early 2016, Crestwood did not also have a women’ program. By 2020, Edwards had led them to back-to-back convention and provincial titles, being named the Ontario Scholastic Basketball Affiliation’s MVP and Defensive Participant of the 12 months. They misplaced one sport in her two seasons.

Davis fondly remembers that first championship remaining, trailing by 15 factors at halftime and coming again behind Edwards, who was fouled late within the sport.

“She’s going to the road, she came visiting and I mentioned, ‘That is the second your brother ready you for,'” Davis remembers. “She hits two free throws to win the sport. All I may do was simply say, ‘Thanks.'”

What some won’t learn about that first title, in 2019, is that Edwards and her household had mourned the lack of Jermaine, who died abruptly at 27 nearly two years prior — what Aaliyah Edwards instructed the Connecticut Put up in 2021 was a coronary heart concern.

“They shared one thing actually particular round basketball,” Davis says. “Folks assume her hair is about Kobe, however it’s additionally about her love for her brother. As she began to ascend, that is one thing she needed to share with him. She did, in her personal means.”

They’re her trademark now, Edwards’ braids that fall about her shoulders, a stunning mélange of purple and gold she has had since eighth grade. They initially have been a nod to Bryant, however in 2020, after he died in a helicopter crash, the braids grew to become a tribute, to not solely him however her brother, her first and most beloved coach.

Edwards nonetheless factors to the sky after made free throws, a nod to Jermaine.

“I credit score my aggressive nature to him,” Edwards says. “He was older than me, stronger than me, however I nonetheless would play to win.”

His obituary included a photograph montage, snapshots of Aaliyah’s development — bruising one-on-ones and all.

“He’d be happy with me getting it performed down low and in excessive publish areas,” she says. “However he’d need me to work extra on my left hand.”

She laughs: “It is slackin’ a bit.”

THE AALIYAH EDWARDS who arrived on UConn’s campus within the throes of the COVID-19 pandemic as a freshman in 2020 won’t have been so daring as to subvert Corridor of Fame coach Geno Auriemma’s needs.

However she’s 21 now, a senior, and days earlier than he may attain 1,200 wins, there’s discuss of a celebration.

Auriemma would not need one. When he realizes he is solely two away from the mark, he is incredulous.

“That is simply how he’s,” Edwards says. “He is simply centered on what we now have left to do … however we’ll rejoice. We let him know we recognize him and we’ll rejoice him.”

Auriemma has leaned on Edwards this season much more due to all of the accidents on his workforce.

“I might prefer to see what number of different huge children across the nation have the duty that Aaliyah has on our workforce given who we’re lacking,” Auriemma instructed the Hartford Courant. “What she’s doing is much more spectacular, as a result of if we had three different publish gamers we may rotate, she’d get a breather right here and there. However she would not get to try this, and that is why I believe she’s deserving of being an All-American.”

These near her admire how Edwards has bloomed on and off the court docket. There is a purpose she’s 52 boards from breaking into UConn’s top-10 profession rebounds record.

“She struggled early, making an attempt to determine a means,” says Olivia Nelson-Ododa, a former UConn ahead who now performs for the WNBA’s Connecticut Solar. “Quite a lot of gamers give up, switch, quit on themselves, however she’s been constantly making an attempt to enhance and get higher. It reveals and the spot she’s in, there was little doubt she was going to be right here.”

Right here, which means working every day alongside that hovering legacy in Gampel and Werth.

“It is all the time in your ideas,” says Nelson-Ododa. “There’s positively that stress and, for lots of gamers, that is arduous to mess around.”

Lou Lopez-Senechal, who at present performs for Hozono International Jairis in Spain and the WNBA’s Dallas Wings, transferred to UConn after 4 seasons at Fairfield College. She was born in Mexico, raised in France, performed at an academy in Eire and was three-time first-team All-MAAC at Fairfield earlier than going to Storrs. And but…

“I used to be very intimidated by it once I did my go to,” Lopez-Senechal says. “All these photos of the older gamers, you see how a lot they’ve achieved, all of the championships, the dates once you stroll round. There’s all the time been that stress with UConn — however [also] that problem.”

Kia Nurse, a fellow Canadian, UConn alumna and Los Angeles Sparks guard, says Edwards’ confidence has grown from when she first arrived in Storrs.

“Realizing her earlier than she acquired there, she was all the time going to do the little issues proper, even when they did not present up on the stat sheet, she was going to influence profitable,” Nurse says. “However I believe her confidence has grown and that is actually translated in her sport. You possibly can see it on the court docket, her assertiveness particularly on the publish presence, which is what UConn has actually wanted over this final couple of years.”

The nationwide championship sport her sophomore season towards South Carolina, for instance, nonetheless eats at Edwards. She was 4-9 from the ground and managed solely two rebounds. She was removed from the one Husky outmuscled within the paint, although. UConn allowed 21 offensive rebounds, 49 complete, to Aaliyah Boston and firm. Edwards felt she was one-dimensional and wanted to develop a dependable perimeter shot — so she labored on that. She nonetheless shoots all over the world from the highest of the important thing earlier than each sport.

“I felt like I wasn’t there for my workforce,” Edwards says about that sport. “The opponent took away the one factor I used to be good at — with the ability to end across the rim — [so] I acquired into the fitness center that summer season and made certain to develop my sport.”

THOUGH SHE SOMETIMES appears to vanish from the motion or runs out of fuel late — she had 23 factors by way of three quarters within the loss to Notre Dame, however no shot makes an attempt within the fourth — Edwards is probably Auriemma’s most constant and arguably most pro-ready Husky, although she nonetheless calls herself a “two-level participant.”

“We’re making our means as much as the three,” she says.

Nobody who is aware of her — from Ontario to Storrs — is shocked.

Davis says that has simply all the time been who she is: What’s subsequent?

“When she acquired to Storrs, Large East Sixth Girl of the 12 months; ‘OK, cool, what’s subsequent?'” Davis says. “‘OK, All-American, what’s subsequent?’ Now it is she desires to enhance her bounce shot, she desires to deal with the ball a bit extra, desires to ultimately step out and shoot the three.”

Edwards was the youngest member of Workforce Canada on the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo and has her sights on the Paris Video games this summer season.

“I need to be a two-time Olympian,” she says. “[That’s] one other motivator, to point out up not just for my college and this program, however for my nation, taking part in for one thing greater than your self. I attempt to problem myself day-after-day as a result of, you recognize, after college, after faculty … life is difficult. One thing’s going to be thrown at you day-after-day.”

Edwards, like Bueckers, nonetheless has faculty eligibility after the 2023-24 season, so her days in Storrs may proceed. She is not saying but whether or not she’ll return to UConn or declare for the WNBA draft, which is April 15. She says UConn has taught her “embrace being a professional.” She has been projected as a top-10 choose, however says she nonetheless desires to hold a number of banners of her personal. She has religion — which wasn’t all the time the case.

“With my brother passing away, I actually misplaced that connection.” Edwards says. “I used to be like, ‘What do I do from right here?’ ‘Why did this occur?’ [But] God has a pathway for us and he will problem us. My teammates, we’re fairly faith-driven, we go to Bible examine collectively, church.”

Jermaine would have been 35 this coming Feb. 17. Edwards says she is aware of whether or not her time at UConn continues or she jumps to the professionals, nationwide title or not, he’ll be watching.

“Each time I play, I am taking part in for my household, I am taking part in for him,” she says.

Edwards waits a beat and smiles.

“I really feel like he’d be very proud,” she says. “However not glad.”