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A.J. Price (middle) is helped off the court by Hasheem Thabeet and Jerome Dyson after injuring his left knee on a hard spill in the first half.

Price To Have MRI On Injured Knee

Men's Basketball Notebook

By: Dan Olender

Posted: 3/21/08

TAMPA, Fla. -- After UConn's loss to San Diego, A.J. Price didn't stick around for too long. Price was forced to leave the St. Pete Times Forum soon after UConn's 70-69 loss to San Diego to undergo an MRI on his left knee, which he hurt during the game.

With 9:39 remaining in the first half, Price laid underneath the basket clutching his knee in obvious pain. Price was carried off the court and never returned to game action and was diagnosed, at the arena, with a sprained knee.

Before he left for the MRI, Price talked about the injury.

"I made a tough move to the basket and as I was pushing off to go up and I just felt everything go wrong in my knee and I took the pressure off of it as fast as I could," he said. "I was thinking about giving it a go, at one point I felt like I could, but when I did some warm-up stuff in the locker room, I just didn't think I could go."

Price emerged as a team leader this season and was one of the biggest reasons why the Huskies went on a 10-game win streak during the middle of the season. With Price meaning so much to this team, it was tough for him to sit on the bench and watch his teammates lose to San Diego.

"It was extremely difficult," Price said. "I was saying all week how excited I was to play in my first tournament and knowing that my team needed me tonight it was extremely difficult to watch."

The SI Curse Lives On

Before there was the Madden Curse, there was the Sports Illustrated Cover Curse. The Madden Curse may be getting more pub these days, but UConn might be under the impression that the SI curse is as strong as ever.

Jeff Adrien was one of six players featured on Sports Illustrated's NCAA tournament preview edition this week. Adrien stood tall as the cover's dominant figure while a collage of players, coaches, fans and mascots made up the cover's background.

The SI Curse has manifested itself many times throughout the years, including in 2001 when, the day after Nomar Garciaparra of the Boston Red Sox was featured on SI's cover, he injured a tendon in his wrist.

Whiteout

Speaking of superstitions, maybe the Huskies should have tried to see if those gray uniforms had some more luck in them.

After the Huskies lost to Providence on Jan. 17 while donning white uniforms, they decided to wear the alternate grays until they lost in them. UConn won eight straight in them, but their loss to West Virginia in the Big East tournament allowed the white jerseys to be taken out of the closet. Prior to Jan. 17, the previous time UConn had worn the white uniforms was on Dec. 16 in a win against Quinnipiac.

Quick Hits

UConn is 1-3 in the NCAA Tournament since winning the 2004 national championship and their losses have come to a No. 10 seed (NC State, 2005 Syracuse Regional second round), a No. 11 seed (George Mason, 2006 Washington, D.C. Regional final) and a No. 13 seed (San Diego, 2008 West Regional first round) … UConn's only other overtime game this year was also in Tampa on Feb. 16 against USF … Adrien recorded the 33rd double-double of his career … San Diego forward Rob Jones scored 14 points. Jones is the grandson of cult leader Jim Jones, who led a mass suicide of 900 people at Jonestown, Guyana in 1978.

Contact Dan Olender at Daniel.Olender@UConn.edu.