TAMPA, Fla. — It took a full minute of game action for Paige Bueckers to make her way down the Connecticut bench. First, she embraced head coach Geno Auriemma near the scorer’s table as play continued behind her. She carried on down through coaches and teammates and personnel, attempting to encapsulate entire relationships into five-second hugs. The family and friends stood rows deep behind them, as they had for most of the second half. The arena was deep into a celebration nearly a decade in waiting.
It is a championship of destiny and God’s perfect plan, Bueckers said. As the Huskies knocked off one team after another these past three months, she’s focused on the faith that everything happens for a reason. Her injuries. Those of Azzi Fudd, the best friend she recruited to join her in Connecticut. The ache of close calls and maybes that prevented her from even one championship when she had realistic plans for multiple.
As she carried on down the path, the subs of a healthy UConn team killed off clock. Those on the bench waited in giddy anticipation until the buzzer, waiting for the confetti to fall. A few stray pieces had fallen ahead of tip-off, a fleeting moment of hope before it was all settled.
Yet now, Bueckers was heading out a national champion with a supporting cast she’d never been able to lean on in years prior as injuries ravaged the roster and Auriemma piecemealed plans. The celebrations and cheers, the trophy, the honors were won not by a singular Bueckers effort, but a combination of three-headed attack that included Fudd and Sarah Strong.
The Huskies talked about it as a team heading into Sunday’s rematch. They had not played their best game yet in the tournament, and what better time than now?
“It's been just, I think, a great summary of what we have been this entire season of being a team, staying connected, on any given night it can be anybody's night,” Bueckers said. "And how we play as a team, and I think that was just a great showing for that between last game and this game. So it's extremely fitting.”
This 12th championship team is the most emotional of Auriemma’s titles since the very first in 1995, he said. He’s sent out many senior classes, but this one was special. It was a longer, ...
