UConn Basketball Star Paige Bueckers Does This One Stretch Earlier than She Goes to Mattress

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At simply 23 years previous, Paige Bueckers has already cemented herself as a power in ladies’s basketball: She’s the quickest participant in UConn historical past to achieve 2,000 profession factors; she was the primary freshman to nab the Picket Award and Naismith Trophy—and, come subsequent month, she’s broadly projected to be the No. 1 choose within the 2025 WNBA draft.

However to date, one honor has eluded Bueckers: the NCAA title. The Minnesota native got here to UConn together with her coronary heart set on successful a nationwide championship, however whereas her Huskies have constantly ranked among the many most formidable groups within the NCAA, they haven’t been capable of seize that prime spot.

In a way, although, the continued striving has introduced the workforce nearer collectively: “Gamers, coaches, help workers, coaching workers, we’re all very shut,” Bueckers tells SELF in an interview over Zoom in February. “Once you’re going by way of one thing with anyone else, it makes it the place you possibly can lean on one another for energy, for steerage, by way of good occasions and unhealthy occasions. They’re at all times there for you.”

Win or lose throughout her ultimate March Insanity try—the Huskies will tip off for the primary time at this yr’s match on March 22—Bueckers is taking consolation in a single factor proper now: Realizing what comes subsequent. “It’s like a weight lifted off your shoulders,” she says.

5 years after she joined the Huskies in 2020, she says the “plan” is to maneuver on, although she technically has one season of eligibility left (because of an ACL tear that sidelined her for the whole lot of the 2022-2023 season). At roughly this time final yr, there was far more uncertainty together with her path: Bueckers was broadly anticipated to make ’23-’24 her final season, then despatched shock waves by way of the basketball world when she revealed at a senior-night ceremony in February 2024 that she had determined to remain at UConn one other yr, as ESPN reported.

“A part of me wanting to remain was me lacking a season and a half because of accidents, so eager to make up for that, get a season again,” Bueckers says. Now, nonetheless, she’s prepared to show the web page. “I’ve been right here for 5 years. It’s been a very long time, longer than the traditional four-year faculty profession, and so I felt just like the time was proper,” she explains. “I’ve had a tremendous time right here at UConn, a tremendous journey. It’s grown me a lot as an individual, as a participant. I’ve loved the relationships, experiences, the bonds. However sooner or later, the journey has to come back to an finish, and the following chapter awaits.”

Whereas Bueckers will miss her teammates and the broader Huskies household, she says she can also be desperate to proceed studying and rising within the WNBA among the many likes of Caitlin Clark, Angel Reese, Sabrina Ionescu, A’ja Wilson, Breanna Stewart, and different stars. “As slightly child, I went to Minnesota Lynx video games, dreaming to be of their sneakers, dreaming to be within the WNBA. I’m undoubtedly not there but, however God keen, that’s the place I wish to be,” she says. “Having that chance to play in a league that I dreamt of being in, [along] with gamers that I look as much as, it makes you actually excited for the long run.”