Geno on Fudd: ‘When she shoots the ball it goes in the basket ... period’

Paige Bueckers had already chosen to be a part of the UConn women's basketball team and Azzi Fudd was getting ready to let her dear friend know, after a long recruiting process which started when Fudd was in the sixth grade, that she was set to join her.

"She told me, ' Paige, I'm committing to UConn.' Then she said, 'No, I'm just kidding,'" Bueckers, a freshman at UConn who was the topranked player in the high school Class of 2020, said. "My face just dropped.

"She had to do some mighty convincing to convince me that she did. It was just overwhelming happiness."

Fudd, a senior at St. John's College

High School in Washington, D.C., and the top-ranked player in the Class of 2021, made her official commitment to UConn on Wednesday, the first day of the early signing period and Fudd's 18th birthday.

With Fudd's signing, Bueckers gets the opportunity to play alongside her best friend. The two first bonded while playing for USA Basketball.

Bueckers said Thursday on a Zoom video conference, in fact, that while the two were members of the U. S. team which won the 2018 FIBA U17 World Cup in Belarus they used to talk about getting that entire starting five to play together in college.

UConn, meanwhile, gets the topranked high school player in the country for the second year in a row and the fourth time in five years, joining Megan Walker (2017), Christyn Williams (2018) and Bueckers.

Bueckers, a 5-foot-11 guard, hails from Hopkins, Minn., and played at Hopkins High School, where she averaged 21.0 points, 9.2 assists, 5.2 steals and 5.1 rebounds per game as a senior. She led the team to a 30-0

record last season, being named the Gatorade Female Athlete of the Year.

Fudd, a 5-11 guard from Arlington, Va., is named after Jennifer Azzi, a member of the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame and former Stanford star.

Fudd was named Gatorade National Girls' Basketball Player of the Year in 2019, the first sophomore to do so, averaging 26.3 points and 6.2 rebounds per game before tearing the ACL and MCL in her right knee in April that year and missing a portion of her junior season.

"I'm really excited that Azzi's coming to school here," Bueckers said, asked of her recruiting pitch to Fudd. "Obviously I would try to tell her nobody knows her game as well as I do and if she goes to another team she's going to have to play against me and I already know her game. It was definitely that part and just the fun off the court ... and obviously the competing in practice part. It was a little bit of everything."

UConn coach Geno Auriemma reiterated Thursday what he has said many times since signing Bueckers, that signing the No. 1 player in the country doesn't necessarily translate into a national championship.

"I've never understood this idea that the only way that you can prove that you're a great program is by getting the No. 1 player in the country every year and that when you don't that there must be something wrong," said Auriemma, whose team is scheduled to open the season Nov. 28 against Quinnipiac at Mohegan Sun Arena.

Auriemma always jokes with Bueckers, who was named the Big East Preseason Freshman of the Year, needling the freshman that she's "famous for being famous."

"This perception that Paige and Azzi are the two greatest high school players ever to play high school basketball in the history of high school basketball ... you know how many Hall of Famers I've coached?" Auriemma said. "We're talking about two kids that have never won a college game in their life."

Having said that ... "There's a pretty good chance that we'll be pretty good," Auriemma said with a laugh. "There is a direct correlation between if you sign those guys at Connecticut, there's a pretty good chance you're going to be an amazing team for a couple years."

The other members of UConn's incoming class, all ranked in the top 30 by espnW, are 6-5 forward Amari DeBerry from Williamsville, N.Y. (No. 15), 6-2 guard Caroline Ducharme from Milton, Mass. (No. 5) and 6-2 guard Saylor Poffenbarger from Middletown, Md. (No. 30.)

Auriemma said the class help gives his team a versatility it has been lacking recently.

Auriemma calls Fudd "a phenomenal shooter of the basketball."

"I would say that for me, it's her sense and her sense of herself and how she is on the court," Auriemma said of what sets Fudd apart, "the way she plays the game in a way that's not rushed, not hurried, not just helter-skelter.

"... When she shoots the ball, it goes in the basket. Period. She absolutely loves and lives for the game. I think that's somewhat rare. She studies the game and thinks the game and enjoys playing the game, not just plays the game because it's cool. She loves the game of basketball and I would too if every time I shot it, the ball went in the basket."