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UConn forward Dorka Juhasz suffered a gruesome injury during the Huskies’ Elite Eight game.
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ESPN showed a close-range replay of the fall — and her broken wrist — live on the broadcast.
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Players were “pretty shook up” after, and fans blasted the network for showing the replay.
UConn forward Dorka Juhasz suffered a brutal wrist injury during Monday night’s thrilling Elite Eight matchup between the Huskies and the top-seeded NC State Wolfpack.
And ESPN showed viewers a close-up replay of the gruesome scene live on the broadcast.
At first, it wasn’t apparent to viewers at home what had transpired. The 6-foot-5 graduate student had collapsed under the basket and unleashed a blood-curdling scream that was picked up on microphones, but a distant shot of her curled up in a ball didn’t offer much context as to what Juhasz had injured.
But shots of various UConn players looking on in disbelief and walking away from the scene in apparent horror conveyed to the audience just how severe it was.
“They were pretty shook up about it,” Huskies head coach Geno Auriemma said of his players. “It was one of those that you’ve seen it before on TV, and it’s not pretty. And they had a chance to see it up close. I didn’t, but they did.”
“They were pretty shook up about it,” he reiterated. “You could see it in their faces.”
ESPN then let viewers in on the appalling scene, too. The broadcast cut to a slow-motion close-up shot of Juhasz’s left wrist, which was visibly broken and hanging limp by her side.
“She was falling down, and she went to go catch herself with both hands, and when she came down, this part of her wrist was completely cleanly fractured and dislocated,” Auriemma explained after the game. “The kids saw it, and they reacted, and Dorka was pretty upset about it.”
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Fans were pretty upset about it, too — not just because UConn had lost one of its key reserves, but because they were subjected to the awful image of Juhasz’s injury. Many viewers took to Twitter to blast ESPN for showing the ghastly clip in real time:
For those who didn’t see the live replay and would like to, an embed is included below.
Proceed with caution, as the contents of the clip are graphic and may not be suitable for some readers:
Eventually, the broadcast, game, and Huskies all moved on. Auriemma said his players “refocused pretty well, considering” the magnitude of the injury they witnessed, and added that Juhasz’s misfortune serves as a “reminder” to himself and his team to not take the moment for granted.
“All this is all well and good, but all these shiny moments… well, one moment that ain’t shiny, and your season is over,” Auriemma said after the game. “That’s how fragile all this is, and that’s why you’ve got to appreciate it, and you’ve got to enjoy it. I don’t care how many of these we win. They’re still like the first one. No different.”
UConn now heads to Minneapolis for its 14th consecutive Final Four. Auriemma and company will face the reigning champion Stanford Cardinal Friday night, with the game tipping off at 9:30 p.m. ET on ESPN.
Read the original article on Insider