The Daily Campus

Issue date: 3/21/08 Section: March Madness

Media Credit: Erik Kong 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.

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.

Continued...

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