Dom Amore: As Ice Brady completes recovery, her long

STORRS – Isuneh "Ice" Brady lifted her head and glanced across the court at the Werth Center to the spot where it happened.

"We were doing a box out drill, three-on-three, and I was going up to get the rebound and just landed awkward," she said. "I didn't have my feet under me and my knee just hit he floor. I felt pain. I reached down and it was not where it was supposed to be. I didn't have pain like that ever before, so I didn't know what to think."

Brady screamed. Her new teammates quickly surrounded her, a scene that has become too familiar for the UConn women's basketball program the last couple of years. Associate head coach Chris Dailey kept telling her to relax.

"It was definitely a shock," Brady said. "I was definitely like, freaking out. The trainer came over to straighten my leg and she popped it back in."

In the moments that followed that October afternoon, eight months ago, Brady found herself in an ambulance. In the days that followed came surgery to repair the cartilage damage caused by the dislocated patella in her right knee. She decided at the age of 10 that she wanted to play for the Huskies, even if it meant defying all odds and all those who considered it just another unreachable childhood dream. She accepted Geno Auriemma's offer of a scholarship at the age of 15, then waited two years and grew her game before signing her letter of intent and enrolling in Storrs.

Now this: season-ending surgery, dream delayed another whole year.

"The first two weeks, there was depression, kind of in shock, still, not really aware," Brady, 19, said in an interview with The Courant on Thursday. "It didn't really hit me. Maybe two months into rehab, I just missed basketball and I wanted to be on the court, and I kept asking the doctors, ‘can I do this? … can I do that?’ And they were like, ‘you’re … not … playing.’ It took a while to understand, even if everything goes well, I’m still not playing."

Ice Brady had knee surgery in October

Today was a very important milestone in her recovery 💙 pic.twitter.com/egw3MCPkyf

— UConn Women's Basketball (@UConnWBB) January 1, 2023

Brady, 6 feet 3 and one of the top recruits in her class, ranked fifth by ESPN, came to UConn in the summer of 2022. She joined Paige Bueckers, who was lost for the season with a torn ACL, and others on the bench. Bueckers and Azzi Fudd, who has missed several long stretches with injuries, "kind of took me under their wings," she said.

She watched as her team, with as few as seven scholarship players, battled through injuries and fatigue and won the Big East regular season and conference tournament, reached the Sweet 16 before losing to Ohio State in March.

"It's a standard," Brady said. "Even when everybody forgot about us, we had so many girls out, the fact we still did what we did, I’m just super proud of what they were able to do with how little they had to work with. It shows you the will of this program, and how we don't feel sorry for ourselves."

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The rehab was arduous. It seemed to take forever before she could bend her knee, and achieve full range of motion. "Everything I did was new and I questioned everything," she said. One day, one step at a time, the various exercises, squats, the rebuilding of the quads, walking, then jumping, then running.

By the end of the season, she was able to do some individual workouts. When she went home to San Diego for a time, she was still feeling hesitant, worried about reinjuring her knee. That's the next hurdle on the way to recovery, the mental hurdle. On Thursday, she was in the Werth Center doing the rebounding and box-out drills she was doing when she got hurt.

"That mental part, I’m still working on that," Brady said. "Each day, it's getting better."

The last step will be taking part in pick-up games, five-on-five. When she gets there, Brady will have most of the summer in front of her to get ready for what will be a red-shirt freshman season.

Assuming the Huskies will have better luck with injuries in 2023-24 – how could they not? – it could be a special one, with Bueckers and Fudd playing together, and Aaliyah Edwards up front, Nika Muhl at the point. Far more depth, and Brady providing size and toughness behind, and alongside Edwards.

Isuneh ‘Ice’ Brady, who committed to UConn women's basketball as a high school sophomore, eager to sign with Huskies next month

In the meantime, Brady plunged forward with her studies, settling on a communication major. She is hoping to shadow UConn's Hall of Famer, Rebecca Lobo, at ESPN for a day as she explores a broadcasting career. She also has a name-image-likeness thing going, an apparel line to be trademarked "Ice Ice Brady." Of course, she is too young to remember Vanilla Ice, but she actually likes the song.

All this began at age seven when her father, John Brady, whom she describes as a "gym rat," passed his love for basketball on to her and registered her to play at the YWCA in San Diego. She began watching games on TV with Sophia Knight, her mentor.

"Breanna Stewart, Morgan Tuck, Moriah Jefferson, watching that ‘big three,’ and then I loved Kia Nurse, Napheesa Collier, Gabby Williams, that was the era I was watching," Brady said. "I just loved the way they looked, the way they carried themselves, the way that they just smashed everybody, and I was like, ‘that's what I want to do.'"

She started visiting schools on the West Coast. "They’d ask me where I wanted to go and instead of saying that school, I was honest and I’d say UConn," Brady remembered. "And they’d say, ‘oh, is that still a thing for you?’ I feel like people didn't really think that was going to happen for me, it was just ‘every kid wants to go to UConn.'"

During her sophomore year at Cathedral Catholic, Brady and Knight came to UConn for a visit. In Auriemma's office, Ice fidgeted with her hands nervously and he noticed, gave her a hard time about it. Later, he texted to ask how she liked the school and when she responded positively he said he might have a surprise for her. The next day, he offered and Brady tearfully accepted, then they went across the street to the UConn bookstore and called her father.

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By the time she got to Storrs, she was a McDonald's, Jordan Brand and SLAM All-American and had won a gold medal with USA Basketball's under-18 team at the FIBA Americas Championship

"Working hard, holding yourself to a standard, it becomes a way of life," Brady said. "I was thinking when I walked in here (for the interview), sometimes you overlook that there was one time when I was a child and I had big dreams. You just expect it. I’m at my dream school, I’m doing what I always wanted to do, it's just a blessing to be where I am, and surrounded by the people I am. … I just want to present my best self out there."

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