STORRS – The UConn men’s basketball team has had its full roster participating in the last two days of practice for the first time in a while, coach Dan Hurley reported Wednesday.
Both Braylon Mullins and Tarris Reed Jr., who’ve been dealing with their own respective ankle injuries, were able to participate this week before the team takes the train into New York City on Thursday to avoid holiday traffic. They expect to be able to get a rare practice in at Madison Square Garden the day before their Black Friday matchup with No. 14 Illinois.
“It’s been good to get some people back into practice, but Tarris and Braylon will still be game-time decisions,” Hurley said. “Because you can practice for a couple of days but if you’ve been out as long as Braylon’s been out, just got to figure out, ‘Is this the game for him?’ And Tarris, ‘Is he healthy enough to play?’”
Mullins has been out since mid-October after tweaking his ankle in practice. Reed, who missed the preseason exhibitions and the season-opener with a hamstring injury, has been out since he sprained his ankle in the Huskies’ win over BYU at TD Garden on Nov. 15.
UConn is approaching the toughest stretch of its nonconference schedule with four of its next five games coming against ranked or almost ranked high-major opponents. After Illinois, the Huskies will travel to Kansas, then host East Texas A&M in a buy game before returning to MSG for reigning national champion Florida and hosting Texas.
Hurley wants his full team available for the gauntlet of a nonconference schedule he and his staff put together, but he has to balance the risk of letting the injuries linger.
“When you schedule the way we’ve scheduled, literally playing – this will be, I think, the third Final Four-caliber team that we’ve played and we’ve played them with health issues in all three,” Hurley said. “You just don’t want to keep playing games like this against the best of the best without your best team. But you also don’t want things to linger and people to then never get healthy and then you’re never feeling complete. So you trust the players and you trust the medical people to direct that. I’m just a coach.”
UConn fans have yet to have seen the way Mullins, a five-star, McDonald’s All-American recruit and former Indiana Mr. Basketball, can affect the game. But his teammates have, and they expect his eventual return to create more open looks for everybody.
“He was killing it today. He was making his shots, he was defending well. He looked really good, as if there was no (time off),” Alex Karaban reported. “Especially today, he was shooting the ball really well and he just looked like himself out there… Having another shooter out there, it’s gonna space the floor even more, create more toughness for us to guard offensively and then create more mismatches as well.”
Reed has shown the way he can change a game. He might be the team’s most important player with the impact he has defending inside the paint and his ability to dominate the boards.
“Part of being successful is obviously you’ve got to be healthy,” Hurley said. “Especially with critically-important players that impact your defense, your offense, your rebounding as significantly as Tarris does. So Tarris has got to be honest about how he’s feeling in the injury, and then you leave it in the hands of the medical people to determine whether he can go, minutes restriction, whatever the situation is, you just leave it in the hands of the medical.
“But eventually we’re gonna get healthy and be able to put a formidable team on the court.”
