{"id":28481,"date":"2011-01-21T10:38:28","date_gmt":"2011-01-21T15:38:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=28481"},"modified":"2011-01-31T08:38:48","modified_gmt":"2011-01-31T13:38:48","slug":"samarie-walker-leaves-women%e2%80%99s-basketball-team","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2011\/01\/samarie-walker-leaves-women%e2%80%99s-basketball-team\/","title":{"rendered":"Samarie Walker Leaves Women\u2019s Basketball Team"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"<p>Freshman<\/a>
Freshman Samarie Walker defends Baylor center Brittney Griner at the XL Center in November. Photo by Steve Slade.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Behind the cheering crowds, television lights, and fans seeking autographs, the reality behind the glamor is often unseen \u2013 that the heroes and heroines of college athletics are still mostly teenagers trying to figure out their place in the world.<\/p>\n

That reality came to light Thursday afternoon when Samarie Walker, a freshman forward on the nation\u2019s No. 2 women\u2019s basketball team who played in 17 of the team\u2019s games this season, announced that she is leaving the team.<\/p>\n

Walker, who did not practice with the team for several days and did not travel to Chapel Hill, N.C. for the Huskies\u2019 83-57 victory over North Carolina on Monday, said she has been struggling with her commitment to playing basketball.<\/p>\n

\u201cRight now I can\u2019t give the team the energy and commitment that it needs to be successful,\u201d Walker said in a statement distributed to reporters after the team\u2019s practice session late Thursday. \u201cI need to go and figure out what my future holds. I have struggled with this for some time, and remaining here would not be fair to my teammates or the coaching staff.\u201d<\/p>\n

Head coach Geno Auriemma said Walker informed him Thursday morning that she wanted to leave the team. He said the former McDonald\u2019s All-American from Ohio had been struggling with her desire to play basketball since before she arrived in Storrs.<\/p>\n

\u201cSamarie came to me back in October and said, I\u2019m really struggling with basketball. I said: since when? She said: Since sophomore year in high school,\u201d Auriemma said. \u201cIt\u2019s been a real struggle for her the last couple of years and it kind of caught up with her. She\u2019s got to figure out what she\u2019s going to do. Whether it\u2019s basketball or not, I think it\u2019s a bigger issue than that right now. We\u2019ve been trying to work with her for the last couple of months, but it just hasn\u2019t worked.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said that last week in the days leading to the North Carolina game, he asked Walker to take time to decide whether she wanted to make the commitment necessary to remain with the team.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can\u2019t make somebody do something that in their heart they don\u2019t want to do,\u201d Auriemma said. \u201cThat\u2019s very frustrating for everybody. Her mom and dad have seen this happen in the past. There\u2019s only so much that a coaching staff or anyone else can do. This isn\u2019t a game or an extracurricular activity where you just use it as a hobby. When you accept a scholarship to play Division 1 basketball at this level there\u2019s a certain amount of commitment required physically, mentally, and emotionally \u2026You\u2019ve to be able to put forth that kind of commitment, that kind of effort, that kind of passion. Samarie says she\u2019s not able to do that at this point.\u201d<\/p>\n

Walker withdrew from UConn and transferred to the University of Kentucky, where she will have three years of eligibility remaining, beginning at the conclusion of the fall semester in December 2011. She will be eligible to play in games following the fall semester of the 2011-12 season.<\/p>\n

The loss of Walker, who averaged 6.2 point and 5.8 rebounds during 18.8 minutes per game this season, means that the defending NCAA champions have only nine players to call upon for the remainder of the year.<\/p>\n

The Huskies have started two freshmen for most of the season \u2013 guard Bria Hartley and center Stefanie Dolson \u2013 and Walker had provided strong rebounding and defense in the forward position, notably in the nationally televised game in November against Baylor\u2019s 6-8 center, Brittany Griner, which the Huskies won 65-64.<\/p>\n

Walker and senior guard Lorin Dixon have provided most of the bench strength for the Huskies as substitutes for All-American senior Maya Moore, junior Tiffany Hayes, and sophomore Kelly Faris, all guards. Redshirt sophomore center Heather Buck, freshman guard Lauren Engeln, and freshman forward Michala Johnson \u2013 all still developing players who average less than 10 minutes per game \u2013 are the other available players. Junior guard Caroline Doty is out for the year recovering from a knee injury.<\/p>\n

The Huskies were impressive in defeating North Carolina, and Auriemma said he noticed that his team seemed to have regained much of the confidence it had exhibited before the team\u2019s Christmas break and then suffering its only loss of the season against Stanford.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the locker room before the game there was just a different feeling,\u201d he said talking about Monday night\u2019s game. \u201cThe body language, the look on their faces was something that hadn\u2019t been there in a long time \u2026 We got a little bit of our swagger back. It was a group effort. Every huddle was like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Auriemma said that beyond his five starters, he likely will have Dixon and Buck as the only experienced players to bring in from a depleted bench. However, he noted it would not be the first time he relied upon just seven players: he did so in 1995, when the Huskies won their first NCAA title.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn 1995 we played 7 players,\u201d he said. \u201cIf they\u2019re the wrong seven, you\u2019re not going to make it. If they\u2019re the right seven, then you\u2019ve got a chance to make it. I think we\u2019ll see. We\u2019ll find out a little more as we go along. Whatever the outcome of each game or the season as we go forward isn\u2019t going to have anything to do with the fact that we only have seven players. We could have failed at what we want to do with 10. We could accomplish our goal with seven. It\u2019s really not going to have any bearing on it. We\u2019re certainly not going to talk about it beyond today, who we have or who we don\u2019t have.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Behind the cheering crowds, television lights, and fans seeking autographs, the reality behind the glamor is often unseen \u2013 that the heroes and heroines of college athletics are still mostly teenagers trying to figure out their place in the world. That reality came to light Thursday afternoon when Samarie Walker, a freshman forward on the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[55],"class_list":["post-28481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-09 08:49:35","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28481"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28481\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28885,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28481\/revisions\/28885"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28481"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=28481"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=28481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}