TAMPA — After such a long, winding climb to the top, what a luxury it is to spread your arms, take a breath and enjoy the view unburdened. As her college career was coming to a close, Paige Bueckers played with a demon’s ferocity, hurtling through three straight 30-point performances in the NCAA tournament to ensure her team did not miss out on the chance to end Connecticut’s nine-year championship drought in Sunday’s title game. But when she finally got there, the pressure seemed to release a bit. All she had to do was right there in front of her: win a basketball game.
Bueckers’s final game of her stellar college career, a thorough, 82-59 win over South Carolina for Connecticut’s 12th national championship, wasn’t her flashiest. But she might have been having the most fun, kicking her feet up and letting the youngsters take over.
Redshirt junior Azzi Fudd and freshman Sarah Strong had 24 points each, pieced together with jaw-dropping shots and picture-perfect jumpers. Bueckers’s 17 points, six rebounds and three assists were steady, methodical and a little unglamorous, such as when she ended up flat on her back after her final field goal with 7:45 to play, a tough layup through four defenders. With Bueckers on the floor, point guard KK Arnold stood over her and revved an imaginary lawn mower while Bueckers double-fist-pumped as a screaming smile split her face in two.
“We got the blueprint now,” Bueckers said later on the championship stage at half court, still smiling.
Bueckers — and her legions of fans — had been waiting for this feeling since she was identified as the next face of women’s college basketball as a high-schooler. She was named national player of the year in her freshman season, then shouldered those expectations as the sport convulsed and exploded around her, spitting out new stars yearly and jacking up the stakes for what being the face of women’s college basketball means.
Her first NCAA tournament in a pandemic bubble in March 2021 was the same at which Sedona Prince posted a picture of the flimsy weight room available to players at the women’s tournament that set in motion an NCAA reckoning of equity in March Madness. This past week, during her last NCAA tournament, Bueckers sounded more like a CEO than a combo guard when she spoke about building wealth through name, image and likeness (NIL) opportunities and the importance of picking brand partners who align with your values.
Bueckers, the expected No. 1 pick in next week’s WNBA draft, graces magazines and watches U.S. Open tennis in Coco Gauff’s family box. She guessed she would have “hundreds” of text messages waiting on her phone after winning the championship, but she savvily declined to reveal names. Coach Geno Auriemma said this past week that no player he has coached has ever faced that type of scrutiny and pressure.
But few have been as magnetic.
“Paige is infuriating, and she’s absolutely mesmerizing when you watch her play at practice. She’s like a symphony conductor that just — everything just flows the way she wants it to flow,” Auriemma said. “She dictates the pace of everything we do at practice, dominates every practice. … My relationship with her has been, I know what she’s going to do, and it’s not always what I want her to do. But I know in the end she’s always doing what she thinks she needs to do for us to win.”
Auriemma called this national championship among his most emotional, comparing it to the title he won in 2000, in front of his mother, and those he won in the senior years of Diana Taurasi and then Breanna Stewart — both of whom were on hand Sunday. When Bueckers checked out of the game for the final time, she beamed, then beelined for her coach, wrapping her arms around him and crying into his shoulder.
Auriemma said his inner circle hoped he might have retired in 2016 after winning four straight national titles with Stewart. But he wasn’t finished, and eventually Bueckers arrived. He got sucked into her magnetism like everyone else.
“My journey became hers,” Auriemma said. “… A lot of serious conversations have been had over the last five years between the two of us. Some conversations are light and fun and don’t mean anything. But today was the first one, I think, in five years, that all the emotions that have been building inside of me came out. And they came out because in five years that she’s been at Connecticut I’ve never seen her cry.”
“He told me he loved me. And I told him I hated him, so …” Bueckers deadpanned, her voice trailing off as she broke into a smile. “We both love each other even though we hate each other some days.”
It didn’t just feel like destiny that this great force of basketball talent and charisma would finally win her national title; to hear U-Conn. tell it, it felt like karmic retribution.
A championship was the only thing missing in a decorated career that had been marred by injuries. After Bueckers became the first freshman to be voted the Associated Press player of the year, she missed her sophomore season with a tibial plateau fracture and meniscus tear, then tore her ACL before the next season.
“Just an overwhelming sense of gratitude for everything that’s happened through the ups and downs,” she said. “I wouldn’t trade it for the world.”
Bueckers now officially enters the pantheon of U-Conn. greats; where she sits among her fellow maestros is up for debate. Her 153 points in a single NCAA tournament sit second in program history after Taurasi’s run in 2003. Sue Bird, Maya Moore, Stewart and others have more titles. But in terms of influence, of reach? Bueckers has a shot at the top spot.
But she said all week she isn’t particularly concerned with her legacy. When asked how she would title this chapter of her life, she said, “Stand firm.”
She gets to fly now, off to the WNBA and whatever else lies ahead having finally accomplished what she worked five years for beside her teammates and a coach she loves.
“We thought we were saving our best performances for this weekend,” Bueckers said.
The championship net hung around her neck when the on-court celebrations wrapped up, and there was nothing else for her to carry.
