The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
How UConn star Bueckers has evolved since freshman year
It was a season few saw coming and fewer saw at all.
Paige Bueckers joined the UConn women’s basketball team as the No. 1 recruit in the high school Class of 2020. At the end of her first season she was the best player in the country, sweeping every national honor she was eligible for. She became the first freshman to be named the Associated Press and United States Basketball Writers Association Player of the Year while also winning the Naismith Trophy and Wooden Award.
But due to the COVID-19 pandemic, fans were not allowed into Gampel Pavilion during the 2020-21 season and most places the Huskies visited. The 2021 NCAA Tournament was held in a bubble in the San Antonio area in front of mostly family.
The 6-foot guard was solid from the start but from mid-January on she was magic.
It started at Tennessee on Jan. 21. Playing on a sprained ankle and struggling with her shooting touch, Bueckers buried a 3pointer as the shot clock expired to give UConn a five-point lead with 25 seconds left on its way to a 67-61 win over the Lady Vols in its first trip to Knoxville in 15 years. From Feb. 3-8, she became the first Huskies’ player to record three straight 30-point games.
On Feb. 8 against No. 1 South Carolina at Gampel Pavilion, she scored second-ranked UConn’s final four points of regulation and all nine points of overtime to finish with 31. Her 3point shot with 10.8 seconds went high off the rim and fell through the net to give the Huskies the final points of a 63-59 victory.
Bueckers would set a schoolsingle game record of 14 assists at Xavier on Feb. 20. After becoming the first player since Maya Moore in 2008 to sweep the Big East’s Player of the Year and Freshman of the Year awards, she was named the Most Outstanding Player of the
Big East tournament.
In her first NCAA Tournament, she had 19 points, nine rebounds, and eight assists in outplaying Caitlin Clark in a Sweet 16 victory over Iowa and then had 28 points — including 10 in a decisive 19-0 run that erased a 10-point second-half deficit — in a win over Baylor that earned her regional MOP honors and the Huskies a spot in another Final Four. UConn fell to Arizona in the national semifinals but Bueckers was named to the allFinal Four team. She averaged 20.0 points, 4.9 rebounds, and 5.8 assists.
But over the next two years she was limited to 17 games due to a pair of knee injuries. She needed surgery for an anterior tibial plateau fracture and lateral meniscus tear in her left knee after a non-contact injury against Notre Dame on Dec. 5, 2021, though she did return in time to help the Huskies to another Big East tournament title and an appearance in the 2022 national championship game in her home state of Minnesota. She would miss the entire 202223 season due to surgery to repair an ACL tear in the left knee suffered in a summer scrimmage.
When Bueckers takes the floor for No. 15 UConn against Big East foe DePaul at Wintrust Arena in Chicago Sunday, it will be her 29th game of her redshirt junior year, matching the total games played from her freshman year.
“She’s bigger than she’s been, she’s stronger than she’s been, and I think she’s invested more in herself as you would expect,” UConn coach Geno Auriemma said. “When you’re young you don’t think you have to do all that stuff. Now she has more knowledge about nutrition, about sleep, about recovery, about everything. Her sitting out gave her a sense of ‘What do I have to do if I want to play this game at a high level?’ She would not have been able to do this when she was a freshman.
“She’s more knowledgeable about what the game needs. I don’t think she’s as wanting to impose herself on the game and I’m after her to really do that. She’s more strategic about when she wants to. But, yeah, Paige is Paige and she gets 20 and she makes it look like a walk in the park.”
Bueckers’ numbers aren’t all that far off from her Player of the Year season. She’s played like an All-American most of the way, but isn’t in the conversation for top honors because of the emergence of reigning NPOY Clark.
Her scoring average of 20.1 is similar as she’s shot the ball at almost the same percentages from the floor, 3-point land, and the foul line. With five players injured and out for the season, she has played as a forward in a four-guard lineup. That and the play of senior Nika Mühl have cut down on Bueckers’ assists but she has a better assist-toturnover ratio and she’s tripled her blocked shots from three years ago.
But three years ago, 29 games was the season as UConn had nine games canceled due to the pandemic. After Sunday’s game with DePaul, the Huskies will have as few as four and as many as 11 games remaining and play for as much as six more weeks.
“All of us freshmen when we came in, we were just hooping like free flowing,” Bueckers said. “We felt like we didn’t have a whole lot of responsibility, although we did. We didn’t focus on that because we were just so excited to play for the University of Connecticut. Nobody was really focused on being tired. We just wanted to win and contribute in any way that we could.
“Comparing that to now, I have a different perspective because I’ve been in a position where I wasn’t even able to play. So really I don’t allow myself to think about being tired, mentally, physically, emotionally, because I’m so grateful to be playing the game of basketball again. There are some days that you’re hurting or tired from practice or from a game, but overall the gratitude of just playing the game I tend not to focus on that. I enjoy playing basketball whenever I’m on the court.”
One difference from 2021 is Bueckers is playing about six fewer minutes per game now. Another is those magic moments from three years ago — so different and so new to quote the classic song by The Drifters that was later recorded by Jay and the Americans — haven’t been there.
Only one game (Kansas) has been decided by single figures. In the Huskies’ five losses, she’s not been the best player on the floor with that recognition going to North Carolina State’s Saniya Rivers, UCLA’s Kiki Rice, Texas’ Rori Harmon, Notre Dame’s Hannah Hidalgo, and South Carolina’s Te-Hina Paopao.
If UConn goes on to win its final three regular-season games and the Big East tournament at Mohegan Sun Arena, it will be either a No. 3 or No. 2 seed for the NCAA Tournament meaning it will get to play two games at Gampel Pavilion. Two wins will send it to a regional either in Albany, N.Y., or Portland, Ore. There will be no Christyn Williams, or Evina Westbrook, or Olivia Nelson-Ododa to help Bueckers get to the Final Four, but forward Aaliyah Edwards is one she can count on. And LSU won the national championship as a No. 3 seed a year ago.
“Freshman year Paige ... Christyn, Liv, and Evina were juniors at the time and they contributed a lot,” Auriemma said. “So Paige was an unknown product at the time, how good was she going to be in college.
She took everything by storm because she was able to play off of those guys. And it’s gotten harder and harder for her every year since with the injuries and the way people play her. I’ve said this, she’s probably the most mis-officiated great player in America today in terms of getting the benefit of the doubt some times.
“This next month, next six weeks, whatever it is, however long we have the ability to play, is going to be really difficult for her. You think about this year’s Paige and freshman year Paige. Paige has four freshmen on the floor with her a lot of times now. There’s two of them in the starting lineup. That’s a lot different than having Christyn, Liv, and Evina out there. There’s a lot more at stake that she has to try and control. She’s a better player than she was then. She’s reluctantly starting to take more shots and be more aggressive. She just wants to win so bad. We have to figure out a way to keep her fresh somehow.”
UConn has won its 15 conference games by an average of 31.9 points so continuing that trend through the rest of the regular season and Big East tournament would go a long way in helping the cause. A 10-day break will follow. The No. 14 and No. 15 seeds are a combined 0-232 in the NCAA tournament so the first round shouldn’t be a problem though a second-round game would be against a Top 25 team or someone just outside it. Then it’s on to either Albany or Portland with the Final Four set for April 5 and 7 at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse in Cleveland.
How far can Bueckers carry the Huskies?
“She’s so consistent with her game, so efficient with her game that after awhile you think, ‘That’s what she’s going to do, that’s what we’re used to,’ “Mühl said. “Then you step back and look at her game and you’re just amazed how talented she is. But people think it’s just talent. It’s a lot of hard work. She’s the hardest-working player ever. For her to come back from injury and still be so consistent, be even more efficient than you were before, it’s a testament to who she is. She knows we need her.”
Women’s basketball fans from around the country will be watching.