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Alexa Philippou
TAMPA, FLA. — Sue Chicken, Diana Taurasi and Breanna Stewart gathered on the UConn Huskies‘ workforce lodge following their alma mater’s loss within the 2022 nationwide championship recreation to South Carolina. The trio of UConn greats wished to console the Huskies — and Paige Bueckers.
The defeat was devastating, historic. It was UConn’s first loss in a nationwide title recreation after 11 earlier wins, extending the college’s championship drought one other 12 months. And but, the alumni wished to reassure Bueckers, then a sophomore, that heartbreak was all a part of the method.
“[The titles] by no means come with out some actually attempting instances,” Chicken recollects telling Bueckers and teammate Azzi Fudd. “Even in case you go 39-0 in a season, it nonetheless wasn’t excellent.” Bueckers’ tenure in Storrs, whereas undoubtedly spectacular, has been removed from excellent. Her freshman 12 months was held in a bubble amid the COVID-19 pandemic. She missed greater than half of her sophomore season and her complete junior 12 months due to knee accidents, most consequentially tearing an ACL in summer time 2022. She reached the Last 4 3 times earlier than this 12 months, and fell quick in every occasion.
However not this time. In her ultimate recreation as a Husky, Bueckers earned that elusive nationwide title. She scored 17 factors and grabbed six rebounds in an 82-59 victory over defending champion South Carolina that secured the only accolade lacking from Bueckers’ résumé and snapped UConn’s nine-year title drought.
The previous 5 years for Bueckers and UConn have been outlined by their shared pursuit of that coveted championship, with the widespread thread of getting knocked down and needing to seek out their means again up.
“Whenever you lose at UConn, it is just like the world is ending,” Stewart advised ESPN. “[We knew] that they had been going to get it. It took slightly bit longer, however they bought right here immediately.”
The trail may need been circuitous. The method may need been attempting. However the ending for Bueckers and UConn? It was as excellent because it will get.
“It is really storybook,” mentioned Rebecca Lobo, who like Bueckers received her first and solely nationwide championship with UConn in her ultimate profession recreation. “For her and the journey that she’s had, what she’s been by means of, I believe, too, it means a lot due to all of the trials and tribulations she’s had alongside the best way.”
Everything of that tumultuous and rewarding five-year journey was distilled within the 10-second hug Bueckers and coach Geno Auriemma shared on the sideline when she checked out of the sport for the final time. It was the primary time Auriemma had seen Bueckers cry, and he advised her, “I like you.” It was Auriemma who could not maintain again tears later, calling this “some of the emotional Last Fours and emotional nationwide championships I have been part of since that very first.”
“[Bueckers’] journey,” he mentioned on ESPN’s postgame present, “has been essentially the most unbelievable for any child I’ve had.”
NEARLY SIX YEARS to the day earlier than Bueckers lower down the nets in Amalie Area, she was visiting Tampa as a junior in highschool attending the 2019 Last 4 for USA Basketball. It was simply days after she’d introduced her dedication to UConn, her dream college, the place she envisioned profitable championships and getting the Huskies again on high.
The pairing of Bueckers and UConn proved seamless. With a swagger to her recreation to pair together with her on-court dominance, she took the school basketball world by storm as quickly as she arrived in Storrs, changing into the primary freshman to win a number of nationwide participant of the 12 months awards. She propelled the Huskies to the Last 4, however even after they had been upset by Arizona within the nationwide semifinal, it appeared that point was on Bueckers’ and UConn’s aspect.
However the center chapters of Bueckers’ profession taught her that nothing — not time, not championship alternatives, not well being — could possibly be taken with no consideration. She missed 19 video games due to a tibial plateau fracture and meniscus tear as a sophomore, later admitting she compelled her return too shortly. After tearing an ACL 4 months later, she sat her complete junior season.
Bueckers pushed by means of practically two years of rehab, typically masking her anguish. She utterly altered her method to the sport and the way she takes care of her physique, prioritizing higher diet, embracing Pilates and dealing with one in all ladies’s basketball’s most famed efficiency enhancement specialists. She leaned into her religion; she mentioned that even when she did not perceive why this had occurred to her, she believed there was a purpose God handed her this impediment.
Issues went removed from easily even as soon as she returned to the court docket in November 2023. Final season took a toll on her because the Huskies confronted a brand new slew of season-ending accidents. By the postseason, Bueckers was taking part in a few of the finest basketball of her profession, again higher than ever from her ACL damage, however the happy-go-lucky participant was nowhere to be seen, changed by somebody feeling a lot weight that she’d get up on recreation days simply wanting them to be over.
“I used to be so frightened about all that would go unsuitable,” Bueckers mentioned, “which you could’t even do something proper,” which all got here to a head within the 2024 Last 4 when the Huskies fell to Iowa by two.
This previous season, Bueckers’ fifth in this system, was totally different. With the assistance of a sports activities psychologist and Auriemma’s continued steering, she realized find out how to keep the place her ft are. To not be so outcome-oriented. Methods to be extra at peace with herself, to run her personal race and to not let the strain amid ever-heightening expectations turn out to be a burden.
Within the leadup to Sunday, Bueckers wasn’t consumed by the concern of shedding. Properly earlier than she was even topped a champion, Bueckers mentioned she nonetheless would not change a factor about her journey — and ultimately, it made Sunday’s feelings all of the stronger.
“You acknowledge the issues that you’ve got overcome to get so far, and you’re feeling prefer it’s all been value it,” she mentioned. “Simply an amazing sense of gratitude for every thing that is occurred by means of the ups and downs. I would not commerce it for the world. And to be rewarded with one thing like this, you may’t actually even put it into phrases.”
THE 12 NATIONAL championships Auriemma has received over 40 years of teaching do not alter his pondering: Successful is difficult, and it requires a lot to interrupt your means.
For many of Bueckers’ profession, he believed that little labored in her favor. Her time in Storrs overlapped with this system’s most snakebitten stretch in many years: Since Bueckers’ sophomore 12 months, UConn gamers have sustained 12 season-ending accidents. Bueckers and Fudd, who had been recruited to be essentially the most potent backcourt pairing within the nation, appeared in simply 17 video games collectively previous to the 2024-25 marketing campaign. It was a stretch Fudd described as having “bonded [the team] by means of trauma.”
Even when the Huskies discovered themselves within the Last 4 throughout Bueckers’ sophomore and redshirt junior years, it wasn’t with a gaggle that Auriemma thought was wholesome sufficient to have an actual shot at profitable all of it. That is what bothers the coach most, he mentioned this weekend, about how these previous few seasons went. As a result of for as sensational as Bueckers had been, Auriemma has lengthy maintained that she would not have the ability to carry UConn to a championship — and knock off the South Carolina juggernaut — alone.
Lastly, in her final season in Storrs, the celebrities aligned. For the primary time in years, Auriemma believed UConn was taking part in at full energy. “We sort of have an opportunity to have the ability to manipulate the sport slightly bit higher than we had earlier than — that is rewarding,” he mentioned Saturday. “That makes up for all of the heartache and all of the trauma and tribulations that we’ve got needed to undergo.”
Fudd loved her healthiest season since arriving at UConn, taking part in twice as many video games (34) as she had within the earlier two seasons mixed (17). Freshman Sarah Strong — who introduced her dedication to UConn one 12 months in the past Sunday — surpassed even inner expectations, rising as top-of-the-line gamers within the nation and a celebrity in her personal proper.
The Bueckers-Fudd-Sturdy huge three 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 Montgomery, Maya Moore and Tina Charles.
The emergence of this UConn workforce — which outdoors of Bueckers skews youthful and inexperienced due to the workforce’s damage spell — was extra of a sluggish burn, notably after early losses to Notre Dame and USC (video games by which Fudd was restricted or unavailable) and a surprising February upset at Tennessee. However 10 days after trying like a shell of themselves in Knoxville, the Huskies confirmed their first actual glimpse of what they could possibly be, demolishing South Carolina by 29 factors on Feb. 16 in Columbia — a sign that they’d modified, and a harbinger of what was to return.
“About two months in the past, this workforce fell in love with one another,” Auriemma advised ESPN’s Holly Rowe. “At first they might play, it was like, ‘Yeah we like one another, we like one another quite a bit.’ … I believe after the Tennessee recreation, they fell in love with one another, with the method, with ourselves as a gaggle, and so they began liking their coaches. I’ve by no means been happier than I have been the final couple of months teaching a workforce.”
Taking part in with a brand new mindset, Bueckers saved a few of her finest performances for her ultimate NCAA match, scoring 105 factors throughout the second spherical, Candy 16 and Elite Eight, essentially the most factors scored in any three-game stretch by a UConn participant. She and the Huskies breezed by means of the match in such dominant trend due to Auriemma’s mastery at getting his groups to peak on the proper time.
All the things was coming along with the makings of a fairytale ending. That is why, amid his regular nerves, Auriemma stored the religion.
“I do not assume the basketball gods would take us all the best way to the top [only for UConn to not win],” Auriemma mentioned. “They have been actually merciless with a few of the youngsters on this workforce. They’ve suffered quite a lot of the issues that would go unsuitable of their school careers as an athlete. … So that they weren’t going to take us right here and provides us extra heartbreak.”
IT WAS 30 years in the past Wednesday that the Huskies celebrated their first nationwide championship by beating Tennessee in Minneapolis’ Goal Heart. They thought they may get their full-circle second again in 2022, when Bueckers, a Hopkins, Minnesota, product, returned to the state for her second Last 4. But it surely as an alternative got here three years later within the Sunshine State, when that Minnesota child delivered the Huskies again to the mountaintop in her ultimate collegiate basketball recreation, driving into the sundown a champion.
Auriemma tried to posit that Bueckers did not want a championship to be thought of one of many program’s all-time greats, that her particular person play and talent to carry all these round her elevated UConn to heights it would not have achieved with out her. Folks debated what her legacy could be with no ring. However now that is a moot level.
Sunday was her coronation. ESPN’s “The Chicken & Taurasi Present” displayed after the sport a graphic itemizing Bueckers’ collegiate accomplishments: three-time Large East participant of the 12 months, three-time unanimous first-team All-American, 2021 nationwide participant of the 12 months.
“All these do not rely,” Taurasi mentioned. “Solely factor that counts is she has a nationwide championship. She is a champion. She’s going to without end be within the document books.”
And she or he did it in her personal means. After years of being pushed by Auriemma, even criticized by outsiders, to play extra aggressively, she did not take over the sport, nor did she have to. Fudd and Sturdy dazzled with a mixed 48 factors, and the workforce performed the UConn means. Bueckers is understood for her selflessness as a teammate, so it was becoming that she might have fun within the background as Fudd was offered the Most Excellent Participant trophy.
“It is future, and clearly I’ve an incredible religion, so I consider God deliberate it completely in the best way that it went out,” Bueckers mentioned. “It is an incredible final exhibiting of the nice workforce basketball that we have been taking part in all season.”
Bueckers was the final participant to chop down a bit of the web, twirling it round as she let loose a roar. She departed the court docket for the final time in her collegiate profession, surrounded by a throng of screaming UConn followers and with the remainder of the web round her neck — enshrined as a nationwide champion.
“There’s something extraordinarily validating about profitable a championship. There’s something about shutting individuals up while you win a championship,” Chicken mentioned. “I might think about, simply given the roller-coaster trip that has been her profession when it comes to the accidents, I believe this may simply be such a heat, fuzzy-feeling option to finish every thing.”
Added Lobo: “Whenever you get to the opposite aspect and look again, you understand kind of the perfection of all of it. What number of gamers finish their profession with a victory? Only a few. It is simply kind of the unbelievable end result of every thing, the exclamation mark on every thing that you’ve got executed.”
