TAMPA, Fla. — UConn women’s basketball star Paige Bueckers isn’t shying away from the ever-growing pressure as she prepares to makes her fourth career Final Four appearance. She’s determined to make the most of her last opportunity to return a national championship trophy to Storrs.
Bueckers has been the subject of intense scrutiny since her arrival at UConn, but the redshirt senior knows she signed up for the microscope when she committed to the most prolific program in women’s basketball history as the No. 1 recruit in the Class of 2020. Now in her fifth season, after a more tumultuous career than she even imagined, Bueckers’ goal of winning an NCAA title has never wavered.
“Making that decision to want to come here and try to live up to that and be a part of a legendary program, it’s a decision you have to make even before you step on campus,” Bueckers said. “Obviously there’s expectations here, and anything less than a national championship is really a disappointment. As players, that’s what you play for and what you want to live up to. The expectations and the pressure; it’s a privilege, so we all look at it as such.”
Coach Geno Auriemma, who took the podium after his players left, shook his head with a rueful smile when he heard Bueckers’ comment. The longtime Huskies’ coach has spent most of the last month trying to lighten the weight of expectations on his superstar, to impress upon her that she has nothing left to prove to cement her college basketball legacy regardless of the tournament’s outcome.
But Bueckers, a competitor to her core, doesn’t feel that way — and Auriemma knows it. As the Huskies prepare to face No. 1 overall seed UCLA as an 8 1/2-point underdog in the Final Four on Friday (9:30 p.m., ESPN) at Amalie Arena, there’s no more pretending that the next matchup is just like any other.
Dom Amore: For UConn, UCLA at Final Four, the mental game as important as the talent
“You can’t say it’s just another game, because no it’s not,” Auriemma said. “You can’t say, not winning it doesn’t really change your legacy or who you are. If you’re Paige and you don’t think like that, there’s nothing I can do to change that. I think maybe the healthiest thing is acknowledging it. The definition of courage isn’t being afraid. It’s grace under fire and being able to perform under the biggest pressure when you are scared it might be over.”
Recent history isn’t on UConn’s side. Though UCLA is making its first Final Four appearance to the Huskies’ 24th, UConn is 1-5 in national semifinals since its most recent national championship win in 2016. The last time Tampa hosted the Final Four in 2019, the Huskies lost a five-point heartbreaker to rival Notre Dame after leading at halftime, the second in what would become a four-year streak of semifinal losses. Bueckers led the team to a Final Four upset over No. 1-seed Stanford in 2022, but the Huskies were blown out in the national title game by South Carolina.
But if anyone can end the program’s nine-year national championship drought in a new era of parity across women’s basketball, it’s a highly motivated Bueckers with her college career on the line. The redshirt senior has been practically unstoppable in March, logging a combined 105 points over UConn’s last ...
