TAMPA — In the pantheon of Connecticut greatness, she arguably had been confined to club seating, one distinct deck below the figurative luxury boxes reserved for those with titles to their name.
Paige Bueckers had done everything a 6-foot soul could do in a Huskies uniform: score, create, distribute, inspire, and lead by example and exhortation. Everything, that is, except win a national championship.
Sunday’s national title game represented her final chance to upgrade.
By afternoon’s end, the three-time first-team All-American had evolved from star to suite member.
“Obviously, you feel like on the other side of a hard time, there’s going to be a blessing,” said Bueckers, who missed all of one season and roughly half of another with knee injuries.. “And we stuck to it and kept the faith. And to be rewarded with something like this, I can’t even really put it into words.”
If they let occupants of those rarefied suites invite guests, it’s a safe wager Bueckers will bring freshman Sarah Strong and graduate guard Azzi Fudd along. Before a sold-out Amalie Arena audience of 19,777, the trio combined for 65 points and 26 rebounds to lift the Huskies (37-3) to an 82-59 romp of reigning national champ South Carolina (35-4), snapping a nine-year title drought for a women’s dynasty that now has won 12.
All three were pulled with 1:32 remaining and UConn leading by 29. The roar among the Huskies partisans hit a crescendo as Bueckers sobbed on Coach Geno Auriemma’s right shoulder during a long embrace upon reaching the sideline.
“He told me he loved me and I told him I hated him,” joked Bueckers, who finished with 17 points, six rebounds and three assists. “But we both love each other even though we hate each other some days.”
Auriemma, who called his 12th national title among his most emotional, was far more philosophical. Fate had taken him and Bueckers on an improbable parallel journey that included a smorgasbord of team injuries, a global pandemic, the death of Auriemma’s mother and mounting questions about whether his time as overseer of the dynasty he had erected had reached its benediction.
“There are times when she and I were very, very serious together, and a lot of serious conversations have been had over the last five years between the two of us,” he said.
“Some conversations are light and fun and don’t mean anything, but today was the first one I think in five years that all the emotions that have been building inside of me came out, and they came out in her because in five years that she has been at Connecticut, I’ve never seen her cry.”
Preceding the cries and clutches and confetti were clangs — from long range.
South Carolina’s game plan — guard the 3-point line feverishly — manifested itself in the Huskies’ 4-for-17 effort from behind the 3-point line. UConn didn’t convert a 3-pointer until backup guard Ashlynn Shade drained one from the left baseline with nine seconds to play in the first half, giving her team a 36-26 lead at intermission.
Yet UConn’s ability to flourish in other ways illustrated the completeness of Auriemma’s club, which ...
