Paige Bueckers glances at the legends gracing the imposing navy-blue walls here in the Connecticut women’s basketball film room. There’s Rebecca Lobo. Maya Moore.
Sue Bird. The photos show each of them dominating. Winning.
Celebrating. Just outside, Diana Taurasi’s national championship portraits adorn the hallway, too. “This is UCONN,” a large sign reads.
Everything Bueckers aspires to become is on these walls, and they remind her of her purpose. “I want to prove that I’m a winner at every level,” she says. Bueckers leans back in her seat on this summer afternoon in Storrs, Connecticut, thinking of all she has been through to get to this point.
She’s a redshirt senior now, returning for a fifth and final season with the Huskies. She could have left UConn for the WNBA this year, but she had been through too much, had come too far—coming back from multiple injuries, including the ACL tear that forced her to miss the entire 2022-23 season—not to return for one last shot at the college national championship that has eluded her. “If, for whatever reason, we don’t win a national championship this year,” Connecticut coach Geno Auriemma says, “she’ll feel like, ‘I’m the best player to ever play at Connecticut that didn’t win a national championship.
’” Before arriving in Storrs in 2020, Bueckers had won championships at every level, from rec to to high school to USA Basketball, garnering a slew of individual awards along the way. She was hera.
