PORTLAND, Ore. — The small group of younger women standing on the entrance row of Moda Middle throughout the court docket from the most important star within the gymnasium should have referred to as out Paige Bueckers’ title 100 instances.
They saved on — “PAIGE, PAIGE, PAIGE, PAIGE ” — till UConn guard KK Arnold observed them.
“It’s best to go take an image with them,” Arnold instructed her teammate. Bueckers shyly headed that manner, as followers clamored for autographs and beamed with pleasure as she delivered.
Paige Bueckers took time to signal some autographs following UConn’s win ✍️@UConnWBB | @paigebueckers1 pic.twitter.com/rsR8huYSnu
— The Athletic (@TheAthletic) April 2, 2024
Bueckers is in contrast to any of Geno Auriemma’s superstars previously, he stated earlier this week. On the one hand, the general public can’t get sufficient of her — as was the case once more Monday evening, when she placed on a clinic towards USC within the Elite Eight with 28 factors, 10 rebounds and 6 assists to propel UConn to the Remaining 4 for the twenty third time in program historical past and third time in 4 years.
However, she might be laborious to gauge — internalizing her feelings a lot that Auriemma generally can not learn her. He has seen her break down precisely as soon as — at Tennessee within the locker room final 12 months when an ACL harm prevented her from enjoying.
“She doesn’t present it,” Auriemma stated. “Different gamers that I’ve had that had been of that degree, they walked round like they owned it. They talked like they owned it. … Paige retains all of it inside and lets it come out when it wants to come back out.”
In her personal manner, Bueckers let these feelings out Monday evening.
Because the seconds ticked off the clock and Bueckers got here down with the ultimate rebound in an epic showdown that includes the No. 3 seed Huskies towards top-seeded USC, she dropped the ball and sprinted towards halfcourt to leap in celebration with teammates. She loosely positioned a Remaining 4 hat atop her head, posed for selfies and waved with each fingers to the UConn crowd as she ultimately skipped towards the tunnel.
There have been instances final 12 months, sidelined with harm, when Bueckers compelled herself to search out pleasure outdoors of basketball. Not anymore.
“(The win) was one of the crucial rewarding emotions I’ve ever felt in my life,” she stated.
Now Bueckers is simply two wins away from solidifying herself as one in every of UConn’s all-time greats. Diana Taurasi, Sue Chook, Breanna Stewart, Maya Moore — every gained not less than two nationwide titles. It’s Bueckers’ flip now, and maybe the duty in entrance of her is much more daunting, contemplating she’s making an attempt to hold the Huskies to their first nationwide championship since 2016 — a dry spell that’s thought-about an eon in Storrs, Conn.
“We’ve had some nice (UConn gamers) on that Mount Rushmore,” Auriemma stated. “I don’t know that we might match ‘em all. However yeah — all she wants is to win a nationwide championship. Hopefully we’ll have a possibility to try this subsequent weekend.”
She’ll share the marquee with Caitlin Clark in Cleveland for yet one more extremely anticipated girls’s school basketball showdown.
In Monday’s star-studded Elite Eight assembly towards USC and freshman sensation JuJu Watkins, Bueckers did all of it for UConn to steal the present. She shot 11 of 23, together with 3-of-6 from past the arc for her 28 factors, only one shy of Watkins. By halftime, Bueckers had 15 factors to Watkins’ 13 because the superstars took turns buying and selling clutch buckets.
Maybe Bueckers’ most spectacular sequence got here within the third quarter with about 4 minutes to play, when she first hit a seemingly not possible turnaround jumper with a defender draped throughout her, then splashed a 3-pointer on the subsequent journey down the court docket to present UConn a 6-point lead and a momentum swing.
She simply makes it look really easy pic.twitter.com/miAvnrHrTW
— UConn Girls’s Basketball (@UConnWBB) April 2, 2024
FOR THREEEEEE pic.twitter.com/guay1A6LXJ
— UConn Girls’s Basketball (@UConnWBB) April 2, 2024
UConn has been famously short-handed this season due to accidents, and Bueckers has performed all 40 minutes in every of the Huskies’ final three video games.
GO DEEPER
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Along with the offensive fireworks, when UConn guard Nika Mühl picked up her fourth foul with 3:05 remaining within the third quarter, Bueckers took on essentially the most daunting defensive activity of the evening, too, by guarding Watkins.
Auriemma described Watkins because the hardest defensive task any of his guards had drawn this season and probably at any level of their UConn careers. However though Watkins had her moments towards Bueckers, hitting a few 3s over her, Bueckers appeared to have a solution of her personal to stamp out USC’s momentum.
“Paige at all times desires to be superhuman. You possibly can’t aspire to be that, however she tries her damndest to be superhuman,” Auriemma stated. “When you will have gamers that assume like, ‘There’s nothing I can’t do, there’s nothing that escapes me,’ they’re simply on one other degree. They play the sport on one other degree. They assume on a distinct degree. They encourage everybody round them.”
In different phrases: “Paige doing Paige issues.”
UConn has a cross-country flight again to Storrs, Conn. for just a few days earlier than the Huskies head to the Remaining 4.
It is going to be must-see TV and Bueckers will once more have the load of a nationwide championship berth on her shoulders. However she will likely be ready.
“For Paige, (the mindset is), ‘That is what I reside for. I reside for these moments,” Auriemma stated. “Each child has this … concern of, ‘What if I can’t?’ Anyone that tells you there’s not (that concern), they’re mendacity. However the nice ones, they put that at the back of their thoughts they usually simply go they usually do what they do.”
(Photograph of Paige Bueckers: Steph Chambers / Getty Pictures)