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ClayK
Joined: 11 Oct 2005
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 Posted: 11/10/20 12:55 pm ::: Azzi Fudd |
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| She will announce her decision tomorrow at 11 a.m. Eastern -- UCLA or UConn.
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myrtle
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| Posted: 11/10/20 10:04 pm ::: |
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| totally incomprehensible that an Azzi would go to UCLA or UConn. If I cover my ears and say la, la, la, la, la really loud maybe I won't notice?
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pilight
Joined: 23 Sep 2004
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| Posted: 11/10/20 10:27 pm ::: |
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| Her waiting until her 18th birthday suggests she and her parents disagree on where she should go. I will therefore guess she's going far away from home, to UCLA.
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Shades
Joined: 10 Jul 2006
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| Posted: 11/10/20 11:01 pm ::: |
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| myrtle wrote: |
| totally incomprehensible that an Azzi would go to UCLA or UConn. If I cover my ears and say la, la, la, la, la really loud maybe I won't notice? |
Incomprehensible? I’d say it’s pretty obvious she’s going to UConn to play with her bestie.
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SDHoops
Joined: 09 Nov 2007
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| Posted: 11/11/20 5:23 am ::: |
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| pilight wrote: |
| Her waiting until her 18th birthday suggests she and her parents disagree on where she should go. I will therefore guess she's going far away from home, to UCLA. |
I suggest she watch the documentary about Nicole Kaz from 1999.......................
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ucbart
Joined: 21 Nov 2004
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| Posted: 11/11/20 10:52 am ::: Re: Azzi Fudd |
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| ClayK wrote: |
| She will announce her decision tomorrow at 11 a.m. Eastern -- UCLA or UConn. |
I thought she expanded her list to 4, to include Maryland Louisville.
My gut is telling she is going to be a Terp.
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Speebs56
Joined: 19 Aug 2015
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Location: Orange county, CA
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| Posted: 11/11/20 11:11 am ::: Re: Azzi Fudd |
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| ucbart wrote: |
| ClayK wrote: |
| She will announce her decision tomorrow at 11 a.m. Eastern -- UCLA or UConn. |
I thought she expanded her list to 4, to include Maryland Louisville.
My gut is telling she is going to be a Terp. |
Fudd chose UCONN.
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linkster
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PickledGinger
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ucbart
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GlennMacGrady
Joined: 03 Jan 2005
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| Posted: 11/11/20 2:19 pm ::: |
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Glad Fudd chose UConn but, as I've said before, she's been somewhat over-hyped by the media for years. How much over-hyped, I'm not sure.
She's realistically about 5-10 with normal hops, so she's not going to be a dominant rebounder, put-backer, shot blocker or defender. While seemingly a very good passer, I'm not sure she's elite at that skill, and she's definitely not as fast or quick as former UConn guards such as Jefferson or Dangerfield. She is a very slippery, canny and good shooter but, again at 5-10, can't just turn around and shoot from the paint or arc like a much taller player; she will need screens. In addition, her minutes per game may not be overly high because UConn will have other good shooting guards competing with her, and who are taller, such as Ducharme and Poffenbarger in her own class plus Williams, Makurat and Bueckers.
There's little doubt Fudd is college AA material, but I'd be surprised (pleasantly) if she can be that rare kind of multi-threat ball dominator, scoring machine and consistent game changer such as Taurasi, Moore, Catchings, Parker, Stewart, Delle Donne or Ionescu. I think it's prudent to ratchet down realistic expectations for Fudd from the Olympian heights of hype she's been receiving since 8th grade. |
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PickledGinger
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| Posted: 11/11/20 4:12 pm ::: |
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| I guess us prognosticators can move on to speculating about Lauren Betts and JuJu Watkins now.
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linkster
Joined: 27 Jul 2012
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| Posted: 11/11/20 4:53 pm ::: |
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| GlennMacGrady wrote: |
Glad Fudd chose UConn but, as I've said before, she's been somewhat over-hyped by the media for years. How much over-hyped, I'm not sure.
She's realistically about 5-10 with normal hops, so she's not going to be a dominant rebounder, put-backer, shot blocker or defender. While seemingly a very good passer, I'm not sure she's elite at that skill, and she's definitely not as fast or quick as former UConn guards such as Jefferson or Dangerfield. She is a very slippery, canny and good shooter but, again at 5-10, can't just turn around and shoot from the paint or arc like a much taller player; she will need screens. In addition, her minutes per game may not be overly high because UConn will have other good shooting guards competing with her, and who are taller, such as Ducharme and Poffenberger in her own class plus Williams, Makurat and Bueckers.
There's little doubt Fudd is college AA material, but I'd be surprised (pleasantly) if she can be that rare kind of multi-threat ball dominator, scoring machine and consistent game changer such as Taurasi, Moore, Catchings, Parker, Stewart, Delle Donne or Ionescu. I think it's prudent to ratchet down realistic expectations for Fudd from the Olympian heights of hype she's been receiving since 8th grade. |
Once Fudd learns that she is 4th or 5th on the guard depth chart she is likely to transfer. 
Who knows what sort of players she and/or Bueckers will end up being. But I'm ecstatic about seeing the two friends play together, along with an array of tall long-range shooters. I have a nice seat in the XL and watching the talent there now and in the future will be memorable. I predict that the Paige & Azzi Show will be a hot ticket.
Last edited by linkster on 11/14/20 1:07 pm; edited 2 times in total |
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ucbart
Joined: 21 Nov 2004
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| Posted: 11/12/20 7:57 am ::: |
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| PickledGinger wrote: |
| I guess us prognosticators can move on to speculating about Lauren Betts and JuJu Watkins now. |
My prediction is Lauren Betts to Baylor. Kim has a good track record on getting the best bigs. If she doesn't get her, Graves will, IMO.
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ClayK
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| Posted: 11/12/20 11:20 am ::: |
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For the record, Fudd and her parents were on the same page ... no conflict there. I talked to her mom yesterday.
There are legit questions about Fudd's athleticism, but she's played very well, when healthy, on the biggest stages in the prep and club scenes. Production counts for something ...
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StevenHW
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StevenHW
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StevenHW
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pilight
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| Posted: 02/25/21 2:07 pm ::: |
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| I didn't realize her mother was Katie Smrcka-Duffy
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myrtle
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| Posted: 02/25/21 4:18 pm ::: |
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| great article. very long but well worth the read.
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Durantula
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| Posted: 02/25/21 5:10 pm ::: |
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| Double post
Last edited by Durantula on 03/12/21 10:40 am; edited 1 time in total |
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GlennMacGrady
Joined: 03 Jan 2005
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| Posted: 02/26/21 1:59 pm ::: |
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Some interesting information in the article amongst a lot of wordy rhetoric.
Again, as I argued above, there's too much hype and hyperbole being attached to Fudd, generating perhaps unrealistic expectations. Especially for a player who has played in only about 20 official games in the 22 months since her double ligament injury in April 2019 and whose percentage of recovery is not really clear.
Here are three examples of the hyperbole, at least one purpose of which is to sell magazines or garner clicks.
1. The article's title: Azzi Fudd is Unbreakable
Well, we all hope so, but the article reports that on January 26, 2020, after about nine months of recovery:
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| In what would have been her ninth game back, her knee needs to rest. |
Later in the spring of 2020, about a year into recovery, when Paige Bueckers comes to live with Fudd and work out with her, we read:
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The ball bounces between them. Check. Over and over, move after move. Sweat pours as they grind -- iron sharpening iron. Fudd hasn't played consistently in weeks. Her knee still bothers her. And Bueckers, the top recruit in the 2020 class, is formidable. "She might have won two spots," Bueckers says, "but I always won three. If she told you any different, then she's lying."
"I think if we played now, I'd definitely be more of a competition," Fudd says. |
Unbreakable? We can all hope Fudd will fully recover, but no one can really know until she's competition tested in college games at UConn nine months from now.
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| As a sophomore at St. John's College High School in Washington, D.C., Fudd put up an absurd 26.3 points, 6.2 rebounds and 2.5 assists per game |
What is "absurd" about these stats? They are quite ordinary by high school star standards. Relatively unheralded Saniya Chong averaged about 35 ppg and 11 apg during her last two years in high school. There are recent players like Victoria Vivians and Tyra Buss who averaged over 40 ppg in high school, and plenty of forgotten players who have put up high school numbers in the same range as Fudd's.
If Fudd is and will continue to be a star, it's not because she put up absurdly great statistics in about two and half seasons of high school play. Methinks the writer isn't all that familiar with girl's high school basketball.
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| She is, by most accounts, the best high school talent the game has seen in decades. |
"Decades", a plural, means that she's the best talent seen in at least 20 years. Really! In two and half years of high school play, Fudd, a 5-10 player recovering from a serious knee injury, is clearly a better talent than Diana Taurasi, Candace Parker, Sylvia Fowles, Tina Charles, Maya Moore, Breanna Stewart, A'ja Wilson, Sabrina Ionescu, Paige Bueckers?
Too much hyperbole.
Again, I'll predict Fudd will be a college AA and maybe more, but the endless ladle of hype, and hence expectations, being poured on her head for so long is not only overly gooey but unfair to the young lady.
A tidbit that interested me was to learn from the article that Tim Fudd is her adopted father.
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| The first time Azzi called Tim "Dad" was a little before her second birthday. He had met Katie when Azzi was a year and a half or so. He had taken them out to dinner for his first date with Katie . . . . |
So, who is Azzi Fudd's biological father? This reminds me of the same mystery surrounding Maya Moore, whose father was not uncovered until she was in college. |
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myrtle
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| Posted: 02/26/21 3:21 pm ::: |
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| I agree it has a lot of hyperbole (I also giggled about the awesome HS stats), but it's still cool in all its detail. Regardless of what happens in the future, she will always have this article and memory. And yes, I would be concerned about that injury. It sounds like a monster compound injury and could very well effect her for her entire career. We can only hope it doesn't do so. And especially that she doesn't re-injure it. The fact that they took a ligament from her 'good' leg to do the graft is also somewhat concerning. I know it was considered a 'minor' ligament, but anything that destabilizes the other leg is concerning. I've seen so many injuries that end up resulting from the additional pressure put on the 'good' side after recovering from the bad side injury that I always cringe to hear something like this in a top athlete. At any rate, we can only wish her well!
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summertime blues
Joined: 16 Apr 2013
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| Posted: 02/26/21 5:59 pm ::: |
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"So, who is Azzi Fudd's biological father? This reminds me of the same mystery surrounding Maya Moore, whose father was not uncovered until she was in college."
Why the hell does it matter, and what business is it of yours or anybody's anyway? Especially if he's not in her life, for whatever reason.
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GlennMacGrady
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| Posted: 02/26/21 6:23 pm ::: |
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| myrtle wrote: |
| The fact that they took a ligament from her 'good' leg to do the graft is also somewhat concerning. I know it was considered a 'minor' ligament, but anything that destabilizes the other leg is concerning. |
To be technical, they harvested the patellar tendon from the good knee, not a ligament.
I've done a lot of research on ACL reconstructions and have watched the entire procedures on YouTube. There are multiple ways to reconstruct a torn ACL, different ones preferred by different surgeons.
The most preferred way in the U.S. seems to be what Fudd had, a bone-to-bone (BTB) patellar autograft. In this procedure, the middle third of the patient's own good knee patellar tendon is removed, along with attached plugs of bone from the good knee's kneecap and shin. Holes are then drilled in the damaged knee and shin, into which the tendon graft bone plugs are placed. Thus, the two bone plugs of the graft heal to bone holes in ACL-less knee. The patellar tendon in the donor knee will grow back after about two years, but there can be residual pain in the front of this donor knee.
A patellar graft from a cadaver can be used (called an allograft), so that the patient doesn't have to donate anything from her own other knee, but research has convincingly shown that allografts are significantly more likely to fail (or be absorbed) than autografts.
Autografts can also be taken from the patient's hamstring tendons. These will have no bone plugs on either end, so they have to be looped through drilled tunnels in the patient's knee and shin. These hamstring tendons won't grow back and can result in permanent hamstring weakness, which isn't ideal for most athlete patients.
Autografts can also be taken from the patient's quadriceps tendon, which will have a bone plug on one end. These autografts seem to be the least researched and used, but are praised by some surgeons.
Finally, some surgeons use a synthetic fiber such as Kevlar for the reconstruction, but this doesn't seem to be recommended much for elite athletes.
Here's a video of a BTB patellar autograft surgery:
<iframe width="640" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/T7_bw9uE-AQ" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe> |
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