TAMPA, Florida — Whether she wins a national title or not, Paige Bueckers will sleep just fine.
There is a tendency to demand that transcendent players check all the boxes. They have to dominate. They have to break records. They have to win titles. They have to change the game. At last year’s Final Four, one of the storylines was whether Caitlin Clark needed a title to cement her GOAT status.
Caitlin Clark, who had just become the all-time leading scorer in all of major college basketball, forever changing the way society sees women’s sports and the athletes who play them in the process.
So it is with Bueckers, one of the purest all-around players the game has seen. As UConn meets South Carolina in the national championship Sunday, there are some who would argue there is still a "hole" in Buecker’s considerable resume.
Bueckers, however, isn’t one of them.
“I'm not worried about that at all,” she said Saturday. “The thing I take great joy and great pride in is the relationships, the experiences, the journeys we've gone on throughout the team. Just the bonds I've been able to create with my teammates, the memories, the close-knit stuff that you can't really experience without sports. How it's brought us all together and how much we've grown as individuals, grown as a team. All the stuff we've been through and how much it's made us stronger.
“Really, the journey is the reward for me. Talk of legacy and whatever, that's not up to me. All I can worry about and control is who I am every single day and who we are as a team.”
