‘She did Paige things’
Auriemma breaks down boost provided by Bueckers’ return
All the UConn women’s basketball team needed Friday night from Paige Bueckers was an easy-breezy reintroduction to the lineup and that’s exactly what she offered, showing no signs of hesitancy or rust over 12 minutes of a 93-38 victory over St. John’s at the XL Center.
She got in, got involved and got out, finishing her first game in nearly 11 weeks with eight points, one nifty assist to Aaliyah Edwards and a first-quarter buzzer-beater that she followed by celebrating with the student section.
Beyond her signature flair, though, and certainly beyond her actual contributions to a game that was well in hand before she even took the court, was Bueckers’ presence. And that, it seems, has the power to change everything for a team that sometimes struggled to find itself without her.
“I think because of the way it played out last year, and Paige being Paige and the kind of year she had, when we lost her a lot of our other players really felt that loss hard,” coach Geno Auriemma said. “Because it just put so much on their shoulders. I don’t know that at the beginning they understood just how much Paige does for them. The team that she came back to is not the same team that she left.”
UConn, indeed, has grown since Bueckers was injured in the closing seconds of a victory Dec. 5 against Notre Dame. The Huskies learned to produce in different ways. The team became stronger mentally through struggles, stronger physically because so much was demanded through three months of depleted lineups and so many injuries.
And here was UConn Friday, whole for the first time, clicking, skipping and smiling through a ho-hum victory that seemed to signal something more significant. Because of who was involved, and how everyone responded.
“She gives them confidence,” Auriemma said. “Teams’ confidence sometimes wavers, goes up and down, but if you have somebody like Paige on the floor, whose confidence never wavers, that kind of is infectious. The rest of the team now knows there won’t be any droughts.”
Everything feels like it just got easier for UConn, even as everything is about to get more difficult. The Huskies, all circumstances considered, held it together pretty well without their best player for 19 games. They close the regular season Sunday against Providence, Senior Day at Gampel Pavilion, and have the Big East Tournament and NCAA Tournament from there.
“Every other team is probably going to improve in the postseason,” Auriemma said. “But we improved by who we added. I don’t know that anybody else is adding somebody like that.”
For all the points and assists and basketball production Bueckers must offer if Final Four and even national championship aspirations are to take hold, Friday was an example of how just having her in the building with a plan to play in place — creating an ability to feel normal again — can elevate a team of over-thinkers.
The score was 19-4 when Bueckers checked in to an ovation 6:19 in. Azzi Fudd already had taken over another game. Her first 3-pointer made it 10-0. Her second made it 17-0. Fudd was on her way to a game-high 19 points in the type of blowout that has made so many Big East opponents wish they never got off the bus over the years, the type that hasn’t always come easy this season.
“I’m not really focused about me and getting back to the old me and doing what I did before because it’s such a different team now,” Bueckers said. “Whatever my team needs, I’m going to do it. And Azzi? She’s cool. She’s a great shooter.”
Fudd made her first five shots and finished 7-for-9 from the field, 5-for-7 on 3-pointers.
“She only needed a fiveminute stretch,” Auriemma said. “And, boom, the game’s over.”
Fudd was actually injured before Bueckers this season, a foot issue that surfaced in November and cost her 11 games upon the team’s return to Connecticut from the Battle 4 Atlantis and a humbling loss to top-ranked South Carolina. Clearly, Fudd is a different player now, production matching the hype.
Up and down the lineup, in fact, there are players Auriemma trusts because he was forced to for so long, and they showed him something. Now the Huskies add the player with the most talent, the player who as a freshman pulled the team to the Final Four while winning every major individual award, the player that the team hated being without but probably needed to be, in a way.
It wasn’t an experience without benefits. If UConn truly is a different group than the shell-shocked team that scored three points in the fourth quarter of that 73-57 loss top-ranked South Carolina, it is already in a better place than it has been all season.
Everyone feels good right now.
“The team that she came back to is a better team, has a better understanding of what we’re trying to do, has more players that can do more things than they could the last time she played,” Auriemma said.
Bueckers had surgery to repair an anterior tibial plateau fracture and lateral meniscus tear Dec. 13 and rehabbed through most of December, January and February as teammates road a coaster of confusion to the point of her return. She basically played the second half of the first three quarters Friday. She made four of five shots.
“The way our team has handled adversity, I don’t think any team in the country has been through what we’ve been through,” Bueckers said. “We’ve taken a bunch of hits. But thing about us is we always bounce back . ... It was just awesome for me to get back and try to incorporate myself back into the flow of what they’ve already built.”