2 days Ago
TAMPA, Fla. — She checked out with 1:39 to play, the victory long since sealed, and Paige Bueckers appeared to fight back tears as she threw her arms around coach Geno Auriemma.For five years, we’ve seen the smirks, heard the wisecracks, witnessed the intensity, yet stoicism with which she played, and it was all in the pursuit of this moment.
No holding back now.“Just gratitude for all that Coach has meant to me,” Bueckers said. “How much he shaped me into the human I am, the basketball player I am.
Just putting it all together in one hug, what our journey has been together.”UConn women’s basketball brings home 12th NCAA Championship in storybook victory over South CarolinaBueckers and Auriemma, who have been partners in this venture to restore UConn to its place atop women’s basketball, hugged for a good minute or two. Then Bueckers worked her way down the bench, hugging each player, coach, staffer.
If it were possible, Bueckers might’ve put the entire State of Connecticut in her arms, and the state would have hugged her back, for she ended her time as UConn women’s basketball superstar-in-residence with no unfinished business.“Every single relationship I’ve built here kind of encapsulated in one hug for five seconds,” she said.Then she reverted to the Paige we’ve come to know.
“He told me he loved me, and I told him I hated him,” Bueckers said.No one can doubt Bueckers any longer, that hers was a landmark career, that she belongs among the many greats to play at UConn, and if one insists a championship is necessary for admittance to that club, Bueckers now has that, too.UConn’s 82-59 victory over South Carolina in the national championship game was not a tour-de-force for Bueckers, who scored 17.
She’s had plenty of those. She didn’t shoot particularly well, but did a half-dozen other things on offense and defense to help the Huskies win. That’s the kind of player she was advertised to be, and with a supporting cast that included Azzi Fudd and Sarah Strong, the Huskies had an unbeatable combination.
“Today, I was thinking, ‘what am I going to say if things don’t go our way?'” Auriemma said. “How could you describe the emotions you would feel if it went the wrong way for us when there is so much riding on this game for a lot of people, mostly for Paige being her last opportunity to do this.“.
.. So I just kept thinking, if we were going to lose, it would have been before now.
I don’t think the Basketball Gods would take us all the way to the end (and not win). They’ve been really cruel to a lot of the kids on this team, they have suffered a lot of the things that can go wrong in a college career, they don’t need any more heartbreak. So they weren’t going to take us here for more heartbreak, so I just held on on to that.
I’m glad they were rewarded.”They won the championship for the first time since 2016, Auriemma’s 12th in 40 years as head coach. The nine years since the last one had seasons killed by injuries, ended with excruciating defeats, and there were times, even earlier this season, when it was impossible not to wonder if all of this was passing UConn by.
Was Bueckers, or were her teammates, big enough, dynamic enough, tough enough to win it all? Or had teams like South Carolina, which was making it fourth straight appearance in the final, or Notre Dame, Texas, UCLA or Southern California ascended to a new level for the women’s game, a level above the Huskies. Was the UConn dynasty dead? Was UConn’s kingdom reduced to just its Big East Conference?UConn guard Paige Bueckers (5) reacts after scoring against South Carolina during the second half of the national championship game at the Final Four of the women’s NCAA college basketball tournament, Sunday, April 6, 2025, in Tampa, Fla. (AP Photo/Chris O’Meara)“These people we’ve played against these last seven or eight years have not really played against a University of Connecticut team,” Auriemma said.
“Yet when they beat UConn it always seemed like the national championship for them. For us, it was, if we ever get a chance to get healthy, this is what we can do.”Everything changed on February 16, the day UConn got all of its players healthy, went on the road to South Carolina and, as heavy underdogs, demolished the Gamecocks by 28 points.
They never looked back. They tore through the rest of the Big East season, then knocked off three No.1 seeds in a row in the NCAA Tournament.
That UConn was a No. 2 seed was actually a little silly, since the Huskies were No.1 in the county in NET ranking, the key metric used by the NCAA, but that’s all academic now.
What we now know is that Bueckers, who scored 34 and 40 in middle-round games where she needed to take over, was up to every challenge and delivered, same for Fudd, who scored 43 in two Final Four games. Freshman Sarah Strong, who had 24 points and 15 rebounds, broke the record for most points by a freshman in the NCAA Tournament that had stood since 1998, is well on her way to being the program’s next resident superstar.What we now know is that Auriemma, 71, and his staff still have the power to recruit the best players, still have the judgement to pick the ones that fit, and know how to coach them once they arrive.
This was a UConn championship run so reminiscent of the Huskies’ past championships; every game a relative breeze and more so than the last. In the Final Four, they beat UCLA by 34, the largest rout in the women’s semifinal/final history, and in the rematch with the Gamecocks, never allowed a significant run, but kept pouring it until the lead reached 32 points. There were no more questions hanging over these Huskies, only answers, with exclamation points.
And what we know now is there was a reward waiting for the devastating injuries that cost Bueckers and Fudd one complete season each and parts of others, for the pandemic that put careers on hold, for the rashes of injuries and illnesses that sometimes made it impossible for the Huskies to take the court, let alone have a even a puncher’s chance in a game like this. All that adversity made it possible for this group to align for this year together, for Bueckers and Strong to overlap a year with a healthy Fudd and others, like KK Arnold and Ashlynn Shade as productive, experienced sophomores.“So many emotions, gratitude was the main one,” Bueckers said.
“The journey, the ups and downs it took to get to that point. It was just overwhelming joy, I’m just so happy for everyone who was a part of this journey. To sum that up in a few words, ‘joy and gratitude.
'”Top of sport again, the Huskies will soon be riding on parade through the streets of Hartford, and what used to be an annual event will be so much sweeter after this long wait.“All that coincided with Paige’s journey,” Auriemma said. “So my journey became hers.
Who’s to say if she won her sophomore year, I wouldn’t feel like I fulfilled my obligation to her. Because it didn’t happen, it became like a crusade. Who knew it would turn out like this?”The Basketball Gods apparently did.
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