New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
Best of Bueckers
Guard was better version of herself in carrying UConn to Big East championship
— The Big East Tournament experience over three whirlwind days falls into the been-there-done-that category for Paige Bueckers. Officially, anyway.
Just like in 2021, the UConn women’s basketball team won a championship with Bueckers named most outstanding player. The Huskies blew out Georgetown Monday, 78-42, and afterwards Bueckers was named most outstanding player and handed the same trophy she was as a freshman.
Bueckers dominated play at Mohegan Sun Arena, took part in mid-court celebrations, stood under falling confetti.
Again.
But two basketball accomplishments with bottom lines so symmetrical were vastly different in how they looked and felt, in what went into them, what Bueckers seemed to get out of them. So after she left the press conference stage, done with general discussion of her team’s ironically turboUNCASVILLE charged performance with barely the ability to substitute players, she took stock of where she was and where she’d been.
“It’s kind of just surreal to me to see where I was where I was as a freshman, and thinking of freshman Paige guarding the posts, getting 12 rebounds, staying in a paint, getting four or five blocks,” Bueckers said. “I don’t think that could have happened my freshman year, so to see the turnaround and just the work that I’ve done for my body in the weight room, in my nutrition, in my sleep and see all of that hard work pay off in that way, it’s just really rewarding. That was the main thing that I really thought about.”
Bueckers scored 83 points in three games this year — 29 in a quarterfinal against Providence, 27 in a semifinal against Marquette and another 27 against Georgetown in the championship game, making 30 of 58 shots and, oh, along the way proving she can play defense (guarding post players) as aggressively and effectively as she has long talked defense. It was an adult performance, really, beyond anything the plucky kid could do three years ago, even, as national player of the year.
Bueckers also had 25 rebounds, 13 assists and nine steals, using 108 minutes of playing time to dominate in ways that raised her sky-high profile just a little more. She is the fifth UConn player twice named most outstanding player of a conference tournament, joining Breanna Stewart (Ameri
can Athletic Conference in 2014 and 2016), Kaleena Mosqueda-Lewis (Big East 2012, American Athletic Conference 2015), Maya Moore (Big East 2009 and 2011) and Kara Wolters (Big East 1995 and 1996).
Her statistics are gaudy enough to make it seem that Bueckers pulled the Huskies’ sled singlehandedly, but she was even better than that. She inspired a team that won on energy, like an electrical socket that every teammate could plug into. UConn has never played harder, or better under such circumstances, than it did over three days at Mohegan, where AllAmerican Aaliyah Edwards watched most of the tournament in street clothes after sustaining a broken nose in the opener.
“Having been through so much, we sort of adapt,” Bueckers said. “When we had the game after Aaliyah went down, we were like, all right, 80 minutes, that’s all we have to give. Then, 40 minutes, all we have to give. No thoughts of being tired, no thoughts of fatigue. Nobody is making excuses. We just continue to deal with the blows and continue fighting.”
It was sustainable. UConn took a 9-0 lead over Marquette and never looked back, took an 11-0 lead over Georgetown and never looked back. Bueckers, 22, was quicker, smarter and stronger than anyone chasing her. Only teammates kept pace.
“Her biggest change other than her body type is the work she put in is different,” coach Geno Auriemma said. “She didn’t even know what she didn’t know back then about anything, really. She just went out and played and whatever happens, happens. … She’s had to fight some things that make her careless, make her lackadaisical with the ball, or complaining all the time when things don’t go her away. Like, it was rationalizing everything. And I think she got to the point where, this is the burden of a star, that you have to carry, and you have to be more prepared, more ready to take all the hits that are going to come your way and not complain and not whine about it and not find ways to rationalize it and just deal with it.”
Bueckers has grown in this way. She was the most celebrated player in America for her gifts and accomplishments at Hopkins High in suburban Minneapolis. She was all arms and legs — “Olive Oil,” she was known back home — and would walk out of practices into the frigid cold of a Minnesota night without a jacket on and go home and eat Skittles for dinner.
At UConn, she learned over time to take the nuances of a passion so seriously. At 19, she led the charge through a pandemic and to the Final Four in 2020-21 before being set back by injuries that cost her most of the past two seasons, including all of 2022-23. She was the best player in the nation on talent alone as a freshman and she’s so much better today, refined and efficient.
En route to her first most outstanding player award at the 2021 Big East Tournament, Bueckers had 58 points in victories over St. John’s, Villanova and Marquette. She added 15 assists, 13 rebounds and three blocks. Christyn Williams won the award in 2022 with Bueckers still easing back into the lineup and Edwards won it last season with Bueckers out.
Bueckers returned to the postseason late last week, maybe as healthy as ever in such a setting. In 2021, she nursed ankle issues that led to offseason surgery. In 2022, she was never 100 percent, despite dominant stretches of the NCAA Tournament, after returning from a threemonth absence due to a knee injury.
On Monday, she left blood on the court, inadvertently slapped by a Georgetown defender. She laughed about it after the game, saying, “I felt like Aaliyah. Definitely not the severity. Good hit. Of course, they didn’t review it, but, oh well.”
Bueckers exudes peace and patience these days, so happy just to be playing but simultaneously understanding what the desired result requires. Her unique combination of poise and persistence has been a wonderful injection for a team that arrived at Mohegan Sun as a postseason enigma because the team has been missing so many players for so long. Three games at the casino, even with Edwards going down, came up cherries and UConn, at the very least, stamped its identity onto the court with the breathless buy-in from a rotation of six.
“It really just made us band together even stronger, play with so much energy and so much passion,” Bueckers said.
Her role?
“I’m just trying to get in a March mode of win or go home, survive and advance, doing everything the team needs me to do to win,” Bueckers said. “Just trying to set the tone of what March basketball is, what April basketball is, what tournament-time basketball is. I’ve been here before. Nika (Muhl) has been here before. Aaliyah’s been here before. The other guys haven’t played in an environment and situation like this. So, just trying to lead by example. And the passion and the hunger that I play with, that’s what takes you far in March.”