Paige Bueckers leads UConn to a national championship after much adversity

TAMPA, Fla. — Azzi Fudd pointed toward the rim: “It’s your turn.”

Paige Bueckers glanced at the hoop, smiled, pulled her ballcap down and started climbing. Finally, Bueckers got to the top of the ladder, put a piece of nylon between the blades of a pair of scissors and squeezed the orange handles together.

Snip. Snip.

She had cut down nets before in what has so far been a decorated career playing basketball — first catching the attention of the greater public with middle school highlights that went viral before evolving into a high school phenom and then a collegiate All-American. Everyone assumed that this moment would come much sooner for Bueckers. A lot of folks thought it would happen more than once.

But it didn’t. Through the twists and turns, triumph and heartbreak, and bumps and bruises in her career, a national championship had eluded Bueckers. She had garnered praise and accolades, but in four seasons in five years, had yet to capture what she really wanted.

“A great freakin’ player. Anybody would start their franchise with Paige because of her efficient way of playing, because she’s a winner, because she cerebrally just knows the game, just has an aura about her,” South Carolina coach Dawn Staley said of Bueckers on Saturday. “Paige is legit… Her career is legendary.”

But her tenure in women’s college basketball unfolded in a way that few expected it to.

She was anointed as the next great UConn player before she even stepped on the court for Geno Auriemma’s squad, but immediately lived up to the hype as a freshman by winning four of the big five national player of the year awards. Her incredible rookie campaign ended with an upset loss to Arizona in the Final Four bubble down in San Antonio.

Then came what was supposed to be a sophomore encore, but ankle and knee injuries forced her to miss a chunk of the season. She came back for March Madness and powered UConn to the national title game, but the Huskies fell to South Carolina — marking the first time Auriemma’s team had ever lost on that stage — in Bueckers’ home state of Minnesota.

Bueckers missed the entirety of what would have been her natural junior year with a knee injury. For the first time since 2007, the sport’s most iconic brand missed the Final Four. That’s when the whispers about UConn’s potential demise as a national power grew into full-throated yells. Auriemma had lost his fastball, the naysayers said. UConn will never win another title, detractors added. There’s increased parity in the sport and the Huskies are no longer getting the best players, the haters chimed in.

Then Bueckers came back as a junior and led UConn back to the Final Four. UConn didn’t get all the way back to the mountaintop of the sport though, as they were bested in the national semifinal by Iowa and Caitlin Clark — a player who had once shared the sport’s spotlight with Bueckers, but had seemingly consumed all of it by the time that matchup rolled around.

This season was Bueckers’ last chance. Over the course of this year, she has publicly proclaimed her intentions to enter the 2025 WNBA Draft, where she almost certainly will be the No. 1 overall pick. She would either leave UConn as its greatest player to never win a national championship, or Bueckers would be credited with restoring the Huskies’ place atop the sport. There was no middle ground.

“For someone who’s invested so much into the University of Connecticut, the community, the team, her teammates, and loves the game so much, she deserves to go out as a national champion,” Auriemma said of Bueckers the day before the title bout. “But so do a bunch of kids at South Carolina that have done the exact same thing. And that’s the beauty of it. Only one of those is going to get to be able to do that. And what I want for Paige is the same thing that (Dawn Staley) wants for her kids.”

Indeed, the hardwood has a way of settling things in a natural way that only it can with 10 players, two hoops and one ball.

Now, there is no debate as to what Bueckers’ legacy is at UConn.

She will be remembered for having enormous expectations placed on her and exceeding them. Fans will recall the adversity she endured with the injuries she battled. They’ll recognize that Bueckers was a star in the sport during a time where its audience grew leaps and bounds, and how she deserves recognition for that. They’ll reminisce on her highlights as a three-time All-American and three-time Big East Player of the Year.

And the lasting image of Bueckers as a collegiate player that should come to mind will be of her, beaming from ear-to-ear, standing atop a ladder on the floor in Tampa’s Amalie Arena, waving a piece of nylon in her hand. Bueckers let out a scream and twirled her string of net in her hand. There were no more tears for her to shed as she let them all out on the shoulder of Auriemma’s coat, giving him a long and deep hug after she subbed out of the game with 1:34 to play.

More than anything now, Bueckers will be remembered as a champion.

UConn’s 82-59 national championship victory over South Carolina on Sunday in front of an announced crowd of 19,777 fans was the coronation of Paige Bueckers. In her final game in a Huskies’ uniform, she tallied 17 points, six rebounds, three assists and two blocks while making all seven of her free throw attempts.

Photo by Ben Solomon/NCAA Photos via Getty Images

Fudd was named the Most Outstanding Player at the Final Four after notching 24 points and five rebounds in the win, and rookie forward Sarah Strong was stellar with 24 points, 15 rebounds and five assists, but no one basked in the victory more than Bueckers. It couldn’t have meant more to anyone else.

After taking a long pull from a can of Coca-Cola — which was apparently Bueckers’ first soda in more than six months — she hopped up onto the press conference stage wearing the cut-down-net around her neck.

“It’s been a story of resilience, of gratitude, of adversity, of overcoming adversity, just responding to life’s challenges and trying to fuel them to make me a better person, a better player,” Bueckers said Sunday. “Just to be able to sum it up in a few words, joy and gratitude would be the forefront.”

There is no dispute. Bueckers met the moment. She steered UConn to its record 12th national championship, seals her legacy among the greats in the history of the storied program.

For the sixth time in her career at UConn, she guided her team to a victory over a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament. No player this century had ever beaten a No. 1 seed five times. That remarkable stat is just a sampling of Bueckers’ greatness.

Consider the following as well when pondering Bueckers’ place among the legends at UConn.

Only she and Maya Moore won four Most Outstanding Player awards at NCAA regionals four times. She was the first Huskies’ player to win Big East Tournament MVP three times. She is one of six UConn players to win the Wade Trophy — the only Player of the Year award that USC’s JuJu Watkins didn’t win this season, and the only one Buckers didn’t capture as a freshman. She is third in all-time scoring behind only Moore and Breanna Stewart in program history. She surpassed both Stewart and Moore for career points scored in NCAA Tournament games. Bueckers’ career scoring average of 19.9 points across 123 games is the best in program history.

Bueckers also finished her season just shy of the joining the exclusive 50-40-90 club. But since 2009, only three players (minimum 20 games played at an average of 20 minutes per game) have finished a season shooting north of 53 percent from the floor, 41 percent from 3-point land and 88 percent from the charity stripe. Bueckers is one of them, joining fellow Husky Moriah Jefferson and Eva Hodgson of William & Mary.

To be mentioned alongside Stewart and Moore — and to surpass the likes of Sue Bird, Diana Taurasi, Rebecca Lobo, Tina Charles and Napheesa Collier in some areas — cements Bueckers’ reputation as one of the best ever to wear a Huskies’ uniform.

“She’s absolutely mesmerizing when you watch her play at practice,” Auriemma said of Bueckers, moments after he used the sleeve of her shirt to wipe off his glasses. “She’s like a symphony conductor that just, everything just flows the way she wants it to flow. She dictates the pace of everything we do at practice, dominates every practice.”

Combine those numbers with how Bueckers grew the game, attracting new fans and capturing the attention and respect of old ones. And then throw in the fact that Bueckers’ stellar play brought UConn’s streak of seasons ending without winning a national championship to an emphatic end.

Photo by C. Morgan Engel/NCAA Photos via Getty Images

To be clear, most teams in professional or college sports would not consider nine years without winning a national championship to be a drought. For most programs, that’s not even long enough to be considered a dry spell.

But UConn is not like most teams, especially in women’s basketball. After winning his first national title in 1995, Auriemma then won six more between 2000 and 2010. Then his Huskies’ team led by Stewart won four in a row from 2013 to 2016.

Then other colleges around the country decided it wanted what UConn had. So they started investing in women’s basketball the same way — with increased salaries for the top coaches and assistants, with improvements to facilities and amenities, and with NIL payments over the past few years. With those advancements, parity increased. Staley guided the Gamecocks to three national titles. Kim Mulkey won two more, one with Baylor and LSU. Teams like Mississippi State, Arizona, Virginia Tech and UCLA made their first Final Fours ever, while squads like Iowa, Texas and N.C. State returned after lengthy hiatuses.

And just when UConn’s power in the sport seemed to be fading, it has now struck back with declarative authority. To bounce back in that way, Auriemma needed Bueckers, and then he felt like he had to be there for her.

“My journey became hers in so many words,” Auriemma said. “Who’s to say … if we won her sophomore year … I feel, ‘Okay, I lived up to my promise; she got a national championship.’ But because it didn’t happen, it was just almost like a crusade on our coaching staff’s part to let’s do this, let’s do this, let’s do this.”

The Huskies are back on top and seem to have the intention of staying there. In his 40th season and at the age of 71, Auriemma shows no real signs of slowing down. Next season, Fudd and Strong will return and both are likely to be preseason All-Americans. Bueckers’ now leaves the program in their hands after she firmly reestablished the Huskies’ place in the sport: as the very best, with an unmatched tradition of winning and producing all-time excellent players.

Once more, UConn is the finest team in women’s college basketball. A large portion of the credit for its restoration should go to Bueckers.