‘I CAN’T WAIT’
Incoming freshman Azzi Fudd counting down the days until her UConn arrival
Azzi Fudd was in seventh grade the first time she popped up on UConn’s radar.
She was playing in an AAU tournament with the Fairfax Stars when then-assistant coach Marisa Moseley just happened to be sitting courtside.
“I had never heard of her before,” said Moseley, now the head coach at Wisconsin. “The whole team had played together for a while, and they were so good. I’m like who’s this kid? Azzi Fudd? She’s so good.”
Keep in mind, this was before the hype, before the notoriety, and before she was anointed as her sport’s next transcendent star.
“She was still just a baby,” her father Tim said.
Moseley remembers excitedly calling UConn associate head coach Chris Dailey.
“You guys have got to see this kid,” Moseley told her. “You didn’t know what she would turn into, but she was just phenomenal. She was so strong, so fundamental. It was fun to watch.
“They made fun of me a little bit because they’re like, ‘Oh, your new obsession.’ We would always joke that everybody had a new obsession with a kid. I’m like, ‘She’s so good, I’m telling you.’ She was so good.”
Moseley wasn’t kidding. Fudd became a can’t-miss sensation at St. John’s College High School in Washington, D.C., and is the latest in a long line of No. 1 recruits to take her talents to UConn. The 5-foot-11 guard signed on Nov. 11 — her 18th birthday — with the Huskies, and she will team up with her good friend and national player of the year Paige Bueckers.
“It was a long process,” Dailey said. “We had been recruiting her since birth. In the end, she came to the place where I thought she was always going to come. It was just a longer process for her. I think people thought automatically that as
soon as Paige committed (in 2019), she would. I told her, Paige coming here isn’t a good enough reason for Azzi to come here.”
THE HYPE AWAITS
Fudd’s arrival to UConn couldn’t be more anticipated. The Huskies posted a 28-2 record, won a Big East tournament title and finished the regular season as the No. 1 team in the Associated Press Top 25 poll before a bittersweet Final Four loss to Arizona. With nearly the entire roster back, including all five starters, the Huskies will enter the 2021-22 campaign as a legitimate national championship contender, maybe even the favorite.
No stranger to big expectations, Fudd is excited, if not a bit nervous, about what’s to come.
“There’s a lot of applied pressure on them with what the expectations are,” Tim said. “It’s not something she makes excuses at, but at the same time, it’s different because she’s never been there before, never been a part of that program. She’s just going to try to find a way to fit in. She’s an overthinker when it comes to that kind of stuff.”
If Fudd ever needs to, she can lean on Bueckers for a little insight. Bueckers was just as touted coming out of Hopkins High School in Minnesota, where in 2019 she was named the USA Basketball Female Athlete of the Year. The award put her alongside some of the game’s greatest legends, including former Huskies Breanna Stewart, Diana Taurasi, Maya Moore, and Tina Charles.
Bueckers lived up to — if not exceeded — those expectations in her first year at UConn, becoming the first freshman to win the Naismith, Wooden, and AP Player of the Year awards. The 5-11 guard led the Huskies in scoring (20.0), assists (5.8), steals (2.3) and 3-point percentage (.464), along with minutes per game (36.1).
Now, it’s Fudd’s turn to handle the hype.
“I’m not one to really think about that kind of stuff,” Fudd admitted. “I’ve never focused on that kind of thing, so I’m not sure how I’m going to handle it.”
Fudd is seen in recruiting circles as a complete product, maybe even a better prospect than Bueckers. Like Bueckers the year before, she won the Morgan Wootten Player of the Year in the coronavirus-shortened 2020-21 season. Her jump shot has even earned praise from NBA star Stephen Curry, who compared it to the likes of Ray Allen and Klay Thompson.
“Azzi, she’s special,” said former UConn guard Carla Berube, who coached both Fudd and Bueckers with USA Basketball. “High character, great family, just gets it. She has an unbelievable work ethic as well. She’s really smart, just really fundamentally sound. The backcourt with Paige and Azzi, I think they’re going to be successful for a long time.”
Dailey knows Bueckers and Fudd are unique both in temperament and skill, but doesn’t want to compare them.
“They’re very different,” she said. “I think they’ve described it as peanut butter and jelly. Azzi is the peanut butter, smooth and solid. Paige is the jelly; it goes all over the place.”
THE COUNTDOWN IS ON
Fudd has been counting down the days since Christmas to when she can move into UConn. Literally.
“One of her brothers was mad at her,” Tim said. “... ‘I can’t wait. I can’t wait.’ So everybody started counting down. All of a sudden it was like, ‘Shoot, we’ve got 30 days.’ We’re 30-something days away. Oh my God.”
From shopping to party planning, there’s still plenty that needs to be done around the Fudd household.
“We have not bought anything for school,” Tim said. “We need to get sheets; we need to get all this stuff. We’re trying to plan her graduation party so that people can see her off. It kind of snuck up on us in a way.”
Fudd plans to be in Denver May 14-16 for USA Basketball U19 World Cup trials. Then, it will be off to Storrs Memorial Day weekend before heading back home to northern Virginia for her high school graduation on June 4.
“I plan on trying to hang out with everyone I can and kind of just saying my goodbyes,” Fudd said. “This year was very, very unusual, so I’ll get some closure with my school friends before I head off.”
Since the season ended, she’s been spending most weekends with Bueckers, whose father now lives nearby in Maryland.
“We’ve been kind of everywhere,” Fudd said.