Alexa PhilippouApr 6, 2025, 05:16 PM ET
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- Covers girls’s faculty basketball and the WNBA
- Prior to now coated UConn and the WNBA Connecticut Solar for the Hartford Courant
- Stanford graduate and Baltimore local with additional enjoy on the Dallas Morning Information, Seattle Instances and Cincinnati Enquirer
TAMPA, FLA. — Sue Chook, Diana Taurasi and Breanna Stewart accumulated on the UConn Huskies’ workforce lodge following their alma mater’s loss within the 2022 nationwide championship sport to South Carolina. The trio of UConn greats sought after to console the Huskies — and Paige Bueckers.
The defeat used to be devastating, ancient. It used to be UConn’s first loss in a countrywide name sport after 11 earlier wins, extending the college’s championship drought any other 12 months. And but, the alumni sought after to reassure Bueckers, then a sophomore, that heartbreak used to be all a part of the method.
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“[The titles] by no means come with out some truly attempting instances,” Chook remembers telling Bueckers and teammate Azzi Fudd. “Even supposing you cross 39-0 in a season, it nonetheless wasn’t best.” Bueckers’ tenure in Storrs, whilst certainly spectacular, has been a ways from best. Her freshman 12 months used to be held in a bubble amid the COVID-19 pandemic. She neglected greater than part of her sophomore season and her complete junior 12 months on account of knee accidents, maximum consequentially tearing an ACL in summer season 2022. She reached the Ultimate 4 thrice earlier than this 12 months, and fell quick in each and every example.
However now not this time. In her ultimate sport as a Husky, Bueckers scored 17 issues and grabbed six rebounds in an 82-59 victory over protecting champion South Carolina, securing the only accolade lacking from Bueckers’ résumé and snapping UConn’s nine-year name drought.
The previous 5 years for Bueckers and UConn had been outlined through their shared pursuit of that coveted championship, with the typical thread of having knocked down and wanting to search out their long ago up. Their destinies have lengthy been intertwined, Auriemma stated in 2023, whilst his big name used to be nonetheless rehabbing from her ACL surgical operation. “Our tale is her tale, and her tale is our tale, in such a lot of tactics,” he stated. “Optimistically, the tale ends the place she will get what she desires through giving us what we wish.”
The trail would possibly had been circuitous. The method would possibly had been attempting. However the finishing for Bueckers and UConn? It used to be as best because it will get.
“It is actually storybook,” stated Rebecca Lobo, who like Bueckers gained her first and handiest nationwide championship with UConn in her ultimate profession sport. “For her and the adventure that she’s had, what she’s been thru, I believe, too, it approach such a lot on account of all of the trials and tribulations she’s had alongside the best way.”
“Our tale is her tale, and her tale is our tale, in such a lot of tactics,” Auriemma stated of Bueckers’ quest for a name. Courtesy Jaison Sterling
NEARLY SIX YEARS to the day earlier than Bueckers lower down the nets in Amalie Enviornment, she used to be visiting Tampa as a junior in highschool attending the 2019 Ultimate 4 for USA Basketball. It used to be simply days after she’d introduced her dedication to UConn, her dream faculty, the place she envisioned profitable championships and getting the Huskies again on most sensible.
The pairing of Bueckers and UConn proved seamless. With a swagger to her sport to pair along with her on-court dominance, she took the varsity basketball international through typhoon once she arrived in Storrs, turning into the primary freshman to win a couple of nationwide participant of the 12 months awards. She propelled the Huskies to the Ultimate 4, however even when they had been disappointed through Arizona within the nationwide semifinal, it appeared that point used to be on Bueckers’ and UConn’s aspect.
However the center chapters of Bueckers’ profession taught her that not anything — now not time, now not championship alternatives, now not well being — may well be taken with no consideration. She neglected 19 video games on account of a tibial plateau fracture and meniscus tear as a sophomore, later admitting she pressured her go back too briefly. After tearing an ACL 4 months later, she sat her complete junior season.
Bueckers driven thru just about two years of rehab, frequently overlaying her anguish. She utterly altered her method to the sport and the way she looks after her frame, prioritizing higher vitamin, embracing Pilates and dealing with certainly one of girls’s basketball’s most famed efficiency enhancement consultants. She leaned into her religion; she stated that even though she did not perceive why this had took place to her, she believed there used to be a reason why God passed her this impediment.
Issues went a ways from easily even as soon as she returned to the courtroom in November 2023. Final season took a toll on her because the Huskies faced a brand new slew of season-ending accidents. By means of the postseason, Bueckers used to be taking part in one of the vital easiest basketball of her profession, again higher than ever from her ACL damage, however the happy-go-lucky participant used to be nowhere to be observed, changed through anyone feeling such a lot weight that she’d get up on sport days simply in need of them to be over.
“I used to be so frightened about all that would cross fallacious,” Bueckers stated, “that you’ll be able to’t even do anything else proper,” which all got here to a head within the 2024 Ultimate 4 when the Huskies fell to Iowa through two.
This previous season, Bueckers’ 5th in this system, used to be other. With the assistance of a sports activities psychologist and Auriemma’s persevered steering, she realized methods to keep the place her ft are. Not to be so outcome-oriented. Methods to be extra at peace with herself, to run her personal race and not to let the force amid ever-heightening expectancies turn into a burden.
And within the leadup to the name sport, neatly earlier than she used to be topped a champion, Bueckers stated she nonetheless would not exchange a factor about her adventure along with her teammates “simply on account of the way it formed us and the way it is formed our mentality, the way it formed our religion and trust in the entirety that occurs for a reason why.”
Guiding a participant like Bueckers to a name is “probably the most fulfilling factor for me at this degree in my existence,” Auriemma stated. AP Picture/Chris O’Meara
THE 12 NATIONAL championships Auriemma has gained over 40 years of training do not adjust his pondering: Successful is tricky, and it calls for such a lot to damage your approach.
For many of Bueckers’ profession, he believed that little labored in her desire. Her time in Storrs overlapped with this system’s maximum snakebitten stretch in a long time: Since Bueckers’ sophomore 12 months, UConn avid gamers have sustained 12 season-ending accidents. Bueckers and Fudd, who had been recruited to be probably the most potent backcourt pairing within the nation, gave the impression in simply 17 video games in combination previous to the 2024-25 marketing campaign. It used to be a stretch Fudd described as having “bonded [the team] thru trauma.”
Even if the Huskies discovered themselves within the Ultimate 4 all through Bueckers’ sophomore and redshirt junior years, it wasn’t with a gaggle that Auriemma concept used to be wholesome sufficient to have an actual shot at profitable all of it. That is what bothers the trainer maximum, he stated this weekend, about how those previous few seasons went. As a result of for as sensational as Bueckers were, Auriemma has lengthy maintained that she would not be capable to raise UConn to a championship — and knock off the South Carolina juggernaut — on my own.
In any case, in her closing season in Storrs, the celebrities aligned. For the primary time in years, Auriemma believed UConn used to be taking part in at complete energy. “We more or less have an opportunity so that you can manipulate the sport a bit of bit higher than we had earlier than — that is rewarding,” he stated Saturday. “That makes up for all of the heartache and all of the trauma and tribulations that we have got needed to undergo.”
Fudd loved her healthiest season since arriving at UConn, taking part in two times as many video games (34) as she had within the earlier two seasons blended (17). Freshman Sarah Sturdy — who introduced her dedication to UConn twelve months in the past Sunday — surpassed even inside expectancies, rising as probably the most easiest avid gamers within the nation and a famous person in her personal proper.
The Bueckers-Fudd-Sturdy giant 3 reminded Auriemma, as early as December, of a few of his different championship cores: Rebecca Lobo, Kara Wolters and Nykesha Gross sales; Breanna Stewart, Morgan Tuck and Moriah Jefferson; Renee Bernard Law Montgomery, Maya Moore and Tina Charles.
The emergence of this UConn workforce — which out of doors of Bueckers skews more youthful and green on account of the workforce’s damage spell — used to be extra of a gradual burn, specifically after early losses to Notre Dame and USC (video games through which Fudd used to be restricted or unavailable) and a surprising February disappointed at Tennessee. However 10 days after taking a look like a shell of themselves in Knoxville, the Huskies confirmed their first actual glimpse of what they may well be, demolishing South Carolina through 29 issues on Feb. 16 in Columbia — a harbinger of what used to be to come back.
Bueckers stored a few of her easiest performances for her ultimate NCAA event, scoring 105 issues throughout the second one spherical, Candy 16 and Elite 8, probably the most issues scored in any three-game stretch through a UConn participant.
It used to be a becoming indicator of Auriemma’s mastery at getting his groups to top on the proper time — and of the collective starvation, given all of the Huskies went thru as people and all they went thru in combination.
“I believe numerous us, our mindset is like, sure, we truly need to win a countrywide championship,” Fudd advised ESPN. “However I believe maximum folks at the workforce are like, we need to do it for Paige.”
The similar is going for Auriemma. A twelfth nationwide name has little affect on his existence, he stated Saturday. Nevertheless it has a huge one on Bueckers’.
“Anytime you’ll be able to have a hand serving to anyone who, whilst you had been chatting with them once they had been 17 years outdated about what may just occur in the event you come to UConn and you might be ready to in truth be capable to do it,” Auriemma stated, “I believe that is the maximum fulfilling factor for me at this degree in my existence.”
IT WAS 30 years in the past Wednesday that the Huskies celebrated their first nationwide championship through beating Tennessee in Minneapolis’ Goal Heart. They concept they could get their full-circle second again in 2022, when Bueckers, a Hopkins, Minnesota, product, returned to the state for her 2nd Ultimate 4. Nevertheless it as an alternative got here 3 years later within the Sunshine State, when that Minnesota child delivered the Huskies again to the mountaintop in her ultimate collegiate basketball sport, driving into the sundown a champion.
Auriemma attempted to posit that Bueckers did not desire a championship to be thought to be probably the most program’s all-time greats, that her person play and talent to boost all the ones round her increased UConn to heights it do not need accomplished with out her. Other people debated what her legacy could be with out a ring. However now that is a moot level.
Sunday used to be her coronation, and Bueckers’ lasting mark is that she did it her personal approach. She overcame accidents that may have knocked many off path. Amid a rising highlight within the game, she discovered convenience in who she is as a participant and as an individual. She grew from the ones devastating losses to Arizona, South Carolina and Iowa, all of the ones screw ups making without equal good fortune that a lot sweeter.
“There’s something extraordinarily validating about profitable a championship. There’s something about shutting other folks up whilst you win a championship,” Chook stated. “I would believe, simply given the roller-coaster experience that has been her profession in relation to the wounds, I believe this may simply be one of these heat, fuzzy-feeling technique to finish the entirety.”
Added Lobo: “While you get to the opposite aspect and glance again, you recognize type of the perfection of all of it. What number of avid gamers finish their profession with a victory? Only a few. It is simply type of the unbelievable end result of the entirety, the exclamation mark on the entirety that you’ve got executed.”
