Paige Bueckers and UConn: A Journey of Triumph and Resilience
TAMPA, FLA. — In the world of women’s college basketball, few names resonate as powerfully as Sue Bird, Diana Taurasi, and Breanna Stewart. These UConn legends found themselves gathered at the UConn Huskies‘ team hotel after their alma mater’s tough loss in the 2022 national championship game to South Carolina. Their mission? To console the Huskies and, in particular, Paige Bueckers.
The defeat was a historic blow, marking the first loss in a national title game in UConn’s storied history after 11 previous wins. It extended the school’s championship drought, but the alumni were there to remind Bueckers, then a sophomore, that such heartbreak was part of the journey.
“[The titles] never come without some really trying times,” Bird recalls telling Bueckers and teammate Azzi Fudd. “Even if you go 39-0 in a season, it still wasn’t perfect.” Bueckers’ time at UConn has been a testament to resilience. Her freshman year was marred by the COVID-19 pandemic, and she missed significant time in her sophomore and junior years due to knee injuries, including a devastating ACL tear in the summer of 2022. Despite reaching the Final Four three times before this year, she fell short each time.
But not anymore. In her final game as a Husky, Bueckers finally captured a national title, scoring 17 points and grabbing six rebounds in an 82-59 victory over defending champion South Carolina. This victory not only secured the missing accolade from Bueckers’ resume but also ended UConn’s nine-year title drought.
The past five years have been a shared journey for Bueckers and UConn, defined by their relentless pursuit of a championship. Their destinies have been intertwined, as Auriemma noted in 2023 while Bueckers was still recovering from her ACL surgery. “Our story is her story and her story is our story in so many ways,” he said. “Hopefully the story ends where she gets what she wants by giving us what we want.”
The path was anything but straightforward, but the ending for Bueckers and UConn was as perfect as it gets. “It’s truly storybook,” said Rebecca Lobo, who, like Bueckers, won her first and only national championship with UConn in her final career game. “For her and the journey that she’s had, what she’s been through, I think, too, it means so much because of all the trials and tribulations she’s had along the way.”
NEARLY SIX YEARS to the day before Bueckers cut down the nets in Amalie Arena, she was in Tampa as a high school junior attending the 2019 Final Four for USA Basketball. It was just days after she’d announced her commitment to UConn, her dream school, where she envisioned winning championships and restoring the Huskies to their former glory.
Bueckers’ arrival at UConn was seamless. With a swagger and dominance on the court, she quickly became a sensation, winning multiple national player of the year awards as a freshman. She led the Huskies to the Final Four, and despite an upset by Arizona in the national semifinal, it seemed time was on her side.
However, the middle chapters of Bueckers’ career taught her that nothing could be taken for granted. She missed 19 games with a tibial plateau fracture and meniscus tear as a sophomore, later admitting she returned too quickly. After tearing her ACL four months later, she sat out her entire junior season.
Bueckers endured nearly two years of rehab, often concealing her mental and emotional struggles. She transformed her approach to the game, focusing on better nutrition, embracing Pilates, and working with renowned performance enhancement specialists. She leaned into her faith, believing there was a reason for her challenges.
Even after returning to the court in November 2023, things were far from smooth. Last season took a toll on her as the Huskies faced a new wave of season-ending injuries. By the postseason, Bueckers was playing some of the best basketball of her career, but the carefree player was replaced by someone burdened by the weight of expectations.
“I was so worried about all that could go wrong,” Bueckers said, “that you can’t even do anything right,” which culminated in the national semifinal when the Huskies fell to Iowa by two.
This last year, Bueckers’ fifth in the program, was different. With the help of a sports psychologist and Auriemma’s guidance, she learned to stay present, not be outcome-oriented, and find peace within herself. She embraced her journey with her teammates, believing it shaped their mentality and faith.
THE 12 NATIONAL championships Auriemma has won over 40 years of coaching don’t change his perspective: Winning is hard, and it requires factors beyond one’s control to align.
For most of Bueckers’ career, little seemed to work in her favor. Her time at UConn coincided with the program’s most challenging stretch in decades, with 12 season-ending injuries since her sophomore year. Bueckers and Fudd, recruited to be a formidable backcourt duo, played just 17 games together before the 2024-25 season. Fudd described this period as bonding the team through trauma.
Even when the Huskies reached the Final Four during Bueckers’ sophomore and redshirt junior years, Auriemma felt they weren’t healthy enough to contend for the title. This frustration lingered, as he believed Bueckers couldn’t single-handedly lead UConn to a championship against powerhouses like South Carolina.
Finally, in her final season, the stars aligned. For the first time in years, Auriemma felt UConn was playing with a full deck. “We kind of have a chance to be able to manipulate the game a little bit better than we had before, that’s rewarding,” he said. “That makes up for all the heartache and all the trauma and tribulations that we have had to go through.”
Fudd enjoyed her healthiest season since arriving at UConn, playing double the games this year (34) than in the previous two combined (17). Freshman Sarah Strong exceeded expectations, emerging as one of the best players in the country and a superstar in her own right.
The Bueckers-Fudd-Strong trio reminded Auriemma of past championship cores, such as Rebecca Lobo, Kara Wolters, and Nykesha Sales; Breanna Stewart, Morgan Tuck, and Moriah Jefferson; Renee Montgomery, Maya Moore, and Tina Charles.
This UConn team’s emergence was a slow burn, especially after early losses to Notre Dame and USC, and a stunning February upset at Tennessee. But 10 days after a lackluster performance in Knoxville, they showed their potential by demolishing South Carolina by 29 points in Columbia, foreshadowing their championship run.
Bueckers saved some of her best performances for her final NCAA tournament, scoring 105 points across the second round, Sweet 16, and Elite Eight games, the most points scored in any three-game stretch by a UConn player.
It was a testament to Auriemma’s ability to have his teams peak at the right time and the collective hunger fueled by the Huskies’ individual and shared challenges.
“I think a lot of us, our mindset is like, yes, we really want to win a national championship,” Fudd told ESPN. “But I think most of us on the team are like, we want to do it for Paige.”
The same goes for Auriemma. A 12th national title may not significantly impact his life, but it has a profound effect on Bueckers’.
“Anytime you can have a hand helping someone who, when you were talking to them when they were 17 years old, about what could happen if you come to UConn and you’re in a position to actually be able to do it,” Auriemma said, “I think that’s the most gratifying thing for me at this stage in my life.”
IT WAS 30 years ago this past Wednesday that the Huskies celebrated their first national championship after beating Tennessee in Minneapolis’ Target Center. They hoped for a full-circle moment in 2022 when Bueckers, a Hopkins, Minnesota product, returned to the state for her second Final Four. But it came three years later in the Sunshine State, when that Minnesota kid delivered the Huskies back to the top in her final collegiate basketball game, riding off into the sunset a champion.
Auriemma tried to argue that Bueckers didn’t need a championship to be considered one of the program’s all-time greats, that her individual play and ability to elevate those around her had already lifted the Huskies to heights they wouldn’t have reached without her. People debated her legacy without a ring, but now it’s a moot point.
Sunday was her coronation, and Bueckers’ lasting mark is that she did it her way. She overcame injuries that would have derailed many. Amid an ever-growing spotlight in the sport, she found comfort in who she is, as a player and as a person. She grew from those devastating losses to Arizona, South Carolina, and Iowa, with each failure making the ultimate success that much sweeter.
“There is something extremely validating about winning a championship. There is something about shutting people up when you win a championship,” Bird said. “I’d imagine, just given the roller coaster ride that has been her career in terms of the injuries, I think this would just be such a warm, fuzzy-feeling way to end everything.”
Added Lobo: “When you get to the other side and look back, you realize sort of the perfection of it all. How many players end their career with a victory? Very few. It’s just sort of the incredible culmination of everything, the exclamation mark on everything that you’ve done.”
Originally Written by: Alexa Philippou
