Auriemma recalls old-school Paige Bueckers
Storrs — On a day where there was a lot of reflecting Sunday prior to Monday's NCAA tournament matchup between Syracuse and UConn, a lot of storytelling, UConn coach Geno Auriemma was asked about the recruiting process for Paige Bueckers.
Auriemma described the Bueckers, who was the No. 1 high school recruit in the nation out of Hopkins High School in Minnesota, he watched back then.
“The first time I saw Paige play, she played like a minute and a half at a time because she was hyperventilating or something,” said Auriemma of Bueckers, now a two-time All-American.
“She weighed about 90 pounds and she would go 100 miles an hour. She was like the proverbial balloon, you know. When you let it out, it just (whirring noise) and then just falls to the ground. That's how she played. And then she'd run over to the bench (panting). And then come back out, do something crazy, and go back to the bench.
“I remember saying to (former UConn assistant coach) Marisa Moseley, who was with me, ‘Seriously? This is the best player in the country? You''ve got to be kidding me. The kid can't stay on the court.”
And yet Auriemma knew that Bueckers had something about her.
Fast-forward a few years and Bueckers leads the Huskies (30-5) with 21.5 points, 4.9 rebounds, 3.8 assists, 1.4 blocks and 2.2 steals per game.
She is a complete player, a student-athlete (named Big East Scholar-Athlete of the Year), dynamic and efficient, shooting 51.7% from the field and 50% from 3-point range. Bueckers is the Big East Player of the Year and a finalist for national player of the year.
She will guide third-seeded UConn into the second round of the NCAA tournament tonight against No. 6 Syracuse.
“She just sees the game the way only great players can see the game,” Auriemma said. “You know, coach Bob Knight said this a long time ago, ‘You can always teach a player to look, but you can't teach them to see. She knows before she even looks what she needs to see. And she sees it quicker than anybody else.
“And then she has the God-given talent to pull it off . ... Yeah. She's good. Thank God.”
My apologies
Syracuse coach Felisha Legette-Jack — she said that only her husband calls her Felisha and she prefers to be addressed as “Coach Jack,” for brevity's sake — is a 1989 graduate of the school, coming back home to coach beginning with the 2022-23 season.
When Legette-Jack arrived, bleeding Orange, there were only four players.
“There's a bunch of young ladies that were still at Syracuse and were making decisions on whether they're going to stay or not,” LegetteJack said.
“And when they shared with me that they would rather try somewhere else, I apologized on behalf of our university. I apologized on behalf of my alma mater on what they had to endure to make them have to leave, to me, the best school in the country.”
Legette-Jack was the 1985 Big East Freshman
of the Year while playing for the Orange, a three-time All-Big East all-star and a two-time honorable mention All-American.
She is in the Greater Syracuse Hall of Fame, the Syracuse Urban Sports Hall of Fame and the Syracuse University Orange Plus Hall of Fame. She was the first woman in school history to have her jersey retired.
Legette-Jack served as head coach at Hofstra, Indiana and Buffalo before returning as head coach of the Orange, where she is 44-20 in two seasons.
Said Legette-Jack: “It should be a destination to come to Syracuse. And for them to want to walk away, they must have had some really tough challenges that they faced.”
Quotable
Fifth-year guard Dyaisha Fair, a two-time All-ACC selection and a third team All-America pick by the Associated Press, transferred from Buffalo to Syracuse when her coach, LegetteJack, switched schools.
Said Fair of the decision to transfer:
“Of course, (Legette-Jack) allowed me to understand that no matter what decision I made that I was going to have her forever, for life no matter what. I think that says a big part of who she is as a person. You know she wants the best no matter what and I think that was a really unselfish thing of her as a coach.
“You think her mindset would be ‘Come ... no matter what, just come with me.' And it was the complete opposite.”