On Wednesday, October 28th, it was announced that Huskies senior Missy Peterson tore her ACL at a Washington practice session and will now miss the 2020-2021 season, confirmed on the UW Athletics website, GoHuskies.com.
Peterson was Washington’s second leading scorer last season (7.0 points per game); and led the Huskies with 78 total assists.
With less than a month before the official women’s basketball start date, November 25th, the devastating injury to Peterson is a major blow to the Huskies.
Washington officially has three other point guards on their roster — senior Khayla Rooks, however, only senior Khayla Rooks, junior college transfer Grace Beasley of Australia, and true freshman Tameiya Sadler from the Bay Area.
Rooks was expected to start alongside Peterson, and is the only remaining Huskies point guard with PAC-12 experience.
Other than Peterson (78 assists versus 50 turnovers), only two of the returning UW players had more assists than turnovers last season — Haley Van Dyke (48 assists vs. 35 turnovers) and Khayla Rooks (41 assists vs. 28 turnovers).
Furthermore, Khayla Rooks had the second highest percentage of plays ending in assists (15.5%), reflecting her role as a primary ballhandler initiating half-court offense for the Huskies.
At a later date, we’ll take a deeper look at how the Huskies may adjust without Missy Peterson at the helm of the offense.
For now, the Huskies must contend with the psychological damage caused by a young team seeing one of their senior leaders go down.
We wish Missy a speedy and thorough recovery, so she can come back stronger than ever for the 2021-2022 season.
