Nebraska sophomore forward Natalie Potts announced Wednesday that she has suffered a torn ACL, an injury that will sideline her for the rest of the season.
Potts suffered the injury during Nebraska women’s basketball’s 85-48 win over North Alabama on Tuesday night.
#22 will be back🤞🏼 Trusting the process. Turning this setback into a major comeback🫶🏼 pic.twitter.com/wgGexm969h
— Natalie Potts (@natpotts2023) November 20, 2024
Potts averaged a team-high 17.5 points and 8.0 rebounds in Nebraska’s first four games, shooting nearly 70% from the field including 8-of-11 from 3 and 80% from the free-throw line.
The 2024 Big Ten Freshman of the Year from St. Louis, Missouri, averaged 10.2 points and 5.5 rebounds while starting all 35 games as a freshman last season.
“We got confirmation just the following morning, and I think, obviously, just quite devastating for everybody involved,” Coach Amy Williams said on Thursday. “Natalie, what a start she’s had to this season, leading our team and scoring rebounding. She worked really hard this offseason. Coming off a Big Ten Freshman of the Year season, it would be very easy to kind of rest on that, and she came in more motivated, just coachable, just hungry, begging my coaches to meet her at 7 a.m. tomorrow so she could get in some extra work on her perimeter shooting and ball-handling skills, and I think we were really seeing that pay off.
“So just devastated for her but I’m so proud of the way this team has just leaned into her to support her, and we’ve worked really hard to create a team culture of resilience. To watch that kind of coming into effect right now, the way they’re just wrapping their arms around her, holding hands with her, lifting her up through this and standing by her, and I know she will do the same for the rest of our team the rest of the season.”
Potts’ absence will leave a big hole in the Nebraska lineup. Williams has options, but none of them will replace everything Potts brought to the table for the 4-0 and 21st-ranked Huskers.
“Obviously I wouldn’t want to go into any battle without Natalie Potts, but I do feel really confident in the entire roster that we’ve put together,” Williams said. “There are times where we’re going to be able to just do some different things. We’ve had to adjust and tweak, and we’ll continue to do that as we get used to life from here forward. But I feel so excited about the fact that we’ve been saying we feel like we’ve got our deepest roster, and now this is what we were built for.”
Amiah Hargrove, a 6-foot-2 freshman, started the second half in Potts’ place. She contributed four points, two offensive rebounds, a steal and a block in 17 minutes. She averaged 3.3 points and 1.5 rebounds in 10.3 minutes per game in the first four.
Kendall Coley, a 6-foot-2 3-and-D senior, spent all offseason practicing on the wing, according to Williams, but she jumped in at the four tonight without any practice, telling Williams she’ll do whatever the team needs. She’s averaged 2.1 points and 1.4 rebounds throughout her career and is a career 40% 3-point shooter. Coley went 4-for-4 from deep for 12 points against South Dakota in Sioux Falls on Saturday.
Jessica Petrie, a 6-foot-2 sophomore, has played both frontcourt spots this season. After a quiet first four games, she scored a career-high 14 points on 6-of-12 from the field (1-of-3 from deep) and 1-of-2 form the foul line with five rebounds and two blocks in 16 minutes against North Alabama.
“I thought she really came on strong in the second half the other day,” Williams said of Petrie. “She had an opportunity to work through a few more mistakes, and then started to really kind of thrive. But really, since she came back from her little stint back in Australia to visit family after our postseason and finals were over last spring, when she came back to us this summer, there’s just a different level of confidence about her. I think she’s in that unique situation that Petra [Bozan] is in right now, where she joined us in August before her freshman year, so she missed all of that summer training, and she’s trying to play catch up, trying to get up to speed on all those things.
“I think last year, about halfway through our conference season, she started to really gain some confidence and comfortableness, and I think this year she comes in with a different level of confidence and she’s worked really hard on the things we asked her to do in the offseason. So we’re excited about what she brings to the table.”
With Potts sidelined, Nebraska will need to lean on senior Alexis Markowski even more for offensive and rebounding production. The All-Big Ten performer is averaging 13.8 points, 6.6 rebounds and 2.6 assists through the first five games.
The Huskers will make the trip up I-80 to take on in-state rival Creighton on Friday afternoon with tipoff at D.J. Sokol Arena set for 4 p.m. CT.
