Throughout her career with the Colorado women’s basketball team, Aubrey Knight has been the ultimate teammate and one of the grittiest players the program has seen in years.
She’s also battled injuries and the latest one will prevent her from playing for the Buffaloes again. A fifth-year senior, Knight recently had major surgery on a torn labrum in her shoulder and she will miss the entire season, bringing her college career to a close.
“Losing Aubrey is a huge loss for us,” head coach JR Payne said. “You could look at the statistics and see she was a great rebounder and a great athlete, could play different positions, things like that.
“The biggest loss is just what we miss every single day in practice, which is someone that is going to work as hard as she possibly can on every single possession, be a great teammate, talk, bring good energy. She’s the ultimate glue kid on a team and so to lose that in a fifth-year senior who truly knows everything is a really, really big loss for us.”
Knight, a 6-foot guard from Ventura, Calif., played 82 games for the Buffs, with 34 starts. She averaged 5.6 points and 5.2 rebounds per game.
Near the end of her freshman year, she injured her shoulder and spent that offseason recovering. She played just three games the next season before another shoulder injury caused her to miss the rest of the campaign.
Knight played in 51 of the Buffs’ 53 games over the previous two seasons and played a significant role in many of those games, averaging about 24 minutes.
“She had a lot of injuries, but still had a huge impact on our program and had a great career and won ballgames for us on the court, also in our locker room,” Payne said. “She’s going to graduate with her master’s in May, so she’s accomplished a lot in her time here. It’s not how she wanted it to end. It’s not how we wanted it to end, but she’s just as much a part of this family and has impacted this program as much as anyone in her time here.”
Payne said Knight will continue to be around the team this season as she recovers from surgery, but that others will need to step up and fill Knight’s shoes on the court.
“Other people are working to fill that void, whether it’s more rebounding effort here or more talk there, or more coaching on the sideline,” Payne said. “So people are working to fill that void, but it’s still a really big void.”
