Paige Bueckers' Last Stand
UConn's All-American guard is looking to make up for lost time in her final days as a Husky.
The first harbinger of the eventual popularity explosion in women’s basketball wasn’t Caitlin Clark’s logo threes or Angel Reese’s double-doubles. It was a then 18-year-old high schooler from Hopkins, Minnesota, named Paige Bueckers.
She was on the cover of SLAM Magazine during her senior year at Hopkins High School, had NBA All-Stars pulling up to her games, and possessed a level of swagger and poise that seemed destined for the big stage.
As someone who grew up in the social media era, I was no stranger to jokes and memes that came at the expense of women’s athletics. Jabs at the WNBA were low-hanging fruit at a lunch table of high school boys.
Although I couldn’t pinpoint what it was, there was something palpably different about Bueckers. She wasn’t the first supremely gifted women’s player I had seen, but at 18, she had more mainstream appeal than virtually any collegiate or professional women’s basketball player in recent memory. She was equally talented as she was popular, and the interest felt entirely organic.
Bueckers was the No. 1 rated recruit in the now legendary 2020 class and, unsurprisingly, committed to Geno Auriemma and UConn, adding to the lineage of Husky greats.
Upon her enrollment, I imagined Bueckers would be the driving force behind the proliferation of women’s basketball. Her stardom would bring more exposure to opposing teams and players, eventually giving them fervent fanbases of their own.
This hypothesis held up well through Bueckers’ freshman season. She became the first freshman to win the Wooden Award on the women’s side and led the Huskies to the Final Four.
After the NCAA made the groundbreaking decision to adopt NIL in the summer of 2021, allowing student athletes to profit off their name, image, and likeness, Bueckers’ dominion over the college athletics landscape felt inevitable. Her immense talent, personality, and social media presence made her an obvious candidate for the unofficial face of the NIL movement.
Bueckers’ megastar trajectory was put on hold during her sophomore season when she suffered a tibial plateau fracture and a lateral meniscus tear in December. While she avoided a more serious injury that could’ve cost her the entire season, Bueckers was still sidelined for two months and never quite recaptured her freshman season form. The Huskies would go on to fall in the national championship to South Carolina in March.
This would’ve marked the halfway point of a typical collegiate career, but between a COVID-19-shortened freshman season and an injury-plagued sophomore campaign, it still felt like Bueckers was just getting started.
Adversity struck again months later when she tore her left ACL in August of 2022 and underwent surgery in December. Bueckers missed the entire season, and the Huskies suffered their earliest tournament exit since 2005.
Women’s basketball had no choice but to adapt in the absence of its biggest star. As Bueckers was rehabbing, new phenoms emerged.
Headlined by the likes of Aliyah Boston, Caitlin Clark, and Angel Reese, the 2023 Final Four saw record viewership. LSU bested Iowa in a final that peaked at 12.6 million viewers. The post-game coverage was amplified by Reese taunting Clark in the final seconds, sparking a nationwide controversy.
Bueckers was relegated from the face of college basketball to an afterthought. She still had a large fanbase and lucrative NIL deals, but she was no longer the singular women’s basketball star, just one of many in an increasingly populated landscape.
Bueckers made her triumphant return in the 2023-24 season and dragged a Connecticut team decimated by injury back to the Final Four. Bueckers was spectacular and, by some metrics, even better than she was as a freshman.
However, her performance received little national recognition in comparison to three years before. The sport was in a different place and no longer needed Bueckers to generate headlines. The Huskies fell to Clark and Iowa in a heartbreaking semifinal, spoiling the comeback season.
Despite being the consensus No. 2 pick in the 2024 WNBA Draft, Bueckers opted to return to Storrs in hopes of settling unfinished business. She’s continued to etch her name into the history books and has been a model of efficiency, averaging 20 points, four rebounds, and five assists on 54/43/89 shooting splits while boasting the second-best assist-to-turnover ratio in the country.
As expected, Bueckers finds herself nominated for several national awards amid UConn's return to the Final Four. Bueckers has always brushed off questions regarding her legacy, but as her time at UConn winds down, it’s worth pondering how she’ll be remembered.
It’s natural to think Bueckers took the easy route. She was a bluechip recruit who joined forces with the ultimate blueblood. However, doing so has only applied more pressure.
Bueckers went to the one school where anything less than a championship would be deemed a failure. She is two wins away from college basketball immortality and one loss from being the first UConn great not to win a national title.
It’s been five years since I first saw a high school Paige Bueckers on the cover of SLAM Magazine. While I can’t exactly say what I expected from her collegiate career, it wasn’t this.
Between injuries to Bueckers and her Husky teammates and gut-wrenching tournament losses, it’s been far from the run she and the UConn faithful envisioned. She was supposed to be the heir apparent to women’s basketball. One who would spearhead a movement and catalyze multiple championship-winning teams.
I don’t believe in one or two-game referendums. Bueckers is comfortably one of the best college basketball players of this generation and has been a symbol of fortitude and consistency during her Connecticut tenure.
With that said, legacy is far more nuanced than how good a player is. It’s a distillation of their achievements and impact. Without a championship, Bueckers’ greatness becomes harder to explain.
She doesn’t have the counting stats or flash of Clark or the titles of Boston, Reese, or her Husky predecessors. She’s just another talented—and extremely efficient—player bound to be overlooked by history.
There’s one thing absent from Bueckers’ trophy case, and the perception of her career will largely be shaped by whether she can capture it this weekend.