CLEVELAND — No one has higher expectations for Paige Bueckers than Paige Bueckers does, and after a heartbreaking 71-69 loss to Iowa in the Final Four on Friday, the UConn women’s basketball star placed the burden of responsibility squarely on her own shoulders.
“I feel like there were a lot of mistakes that I made that could have prevented that play from even being that big,” she said. “You can look at one play and say, ‘Oh that killed us’ … but we should have done a better job — I should have done a better job — of making sure we didn’t leave the game up to chance like that and leave the game up to one bad call going our way and that deciding it.”
It was a devastating finale for the Huskies and for Bueckers after she averaged 28 points, nine rebounds, five assists and 3.3 steals across the previous four games of the tournament. But the senior struggled against the Hawkeyes, shooting 7-for-17 from the field for 17 points with four rebounds and three assists. She failed to record a steal for the first time in the postseason and gave up a team-high four turnovers.
Bueckers knows she will find perspective at some point as she prepares to return for her last season in Storrs in 2024-25, and even in the moment she could feel the magnitude of what UConn accomplished this year. The Huskies reached the Final Four on a miracle run, playing most of the season with four freshmen in a bare-boned, seven-man rotation.
“The only thing you can really feel right now is the sting of the loss,” she said through tears. “It takes a while to process after the season, win or lose, the whole journey of it all. But this year, especially from my perspective, you appreciate it as it goes along just being on this team. Everybody saw the heart, the passion that we played with … and this season meant everything to us, against all odds. Nobody thought we would be here.”
The final 30 seconds of the national semifinal will play on a nonstop loop in coach Geno Auriemma’s mind for some time, though. The illegal screen called against Aaliyah Edwards that killed his last-shot play, the final rebound that Iowa secured off of a missed free throw to end it, are what ifs that hang over the legendary Huskies’ coach. But with Bueckers coming back to use her redshirt season, Auriemma hopes the experience establishes a foundation for her triumphant last ride.
“She definitely didn’t get the ball enough and definitely didn’t play the way she had played in the tournament leading up to today,” Auriemma said. “This is a great learning experience for Paige.
“Paige is a patient person who waits, and I think she’s going to learn — or has begun to learn — that there’s no waiting at this time of the year. You make it happen yourself, and you have to be more selfish. I know she wants to be the greatest teammate of all time, but I think those days are over.”
“You guys gotta win this next year”
The deepest heartbreak for Bueckers is seeing Edwards and Nika Muhl, her classmates for four years at UConn, move on to professional basketball without accomplishing the ultimate goal of winning an NCAA championship. There was a hollowness in Muhl’s eyes as she tried to dissect the final moments of the game in real time, but the steely determination she had while guarding Caitlin Clark flashed again as she spoke about the future of the program.
“We told Aubrey (Griffin) and Paige, ‘You guys gotta win this next year,'” Muhl said. “I can sit here and be like ‘What if she didn’t get injured’ and look for the whys, but we’ve been looking for the whys all year, and we said we’re not going to do it anymore … Being here was almost impossible for us, but I feel like we believed. If the future team next year that’s going to be here — and everybody is going to be healthy — has the same belief as we had this year, I don’t think anybody can beat them.”
Edwards said she struggled to articulate the waves of emotions in the postgame locker room, searching for a way to reassure the Huskies’ freshmen experiencing a pain for the first time that was all too familiar to the three seniors.
“It was really tough just to get words out for me personally, but I’m so proud of what they did and what they were able to accomplish out there,” Edwards said. “They weren’t playing like freshmen today in this game. We had at times three on the court, and there’s only three people on this team who have played in the Final Four before. I’m super proud and hope they continue to build off of this confidence for next season.”
There will be yet another learning curve for Bueckers to take the reigns of leadership more single-handedly than ever before next season without her class by her side. Developing her voice on and off the court is an ongoing process, but one that she already committed to coming into 2023-24.
“It’ll be hard and a challenge, but at the same time I’ve learned so much from (Edwards and Muhl) and from Coach about how to be great leader, and I just want to continue to be better at that,” Bueckers said. “I want to embrace that … Being a leader for the young guys in how I play and lead by example but also with my voice is something I think I gained a new appreciation for this year.”
“That’s the world we created”
UConn was never fully healthy in 2023-24 after Jana El-Alfy suffered her season-ending Achilles rupture at the FIBA U19 World Cup in July, but the Huskies were voted the preseason No. 2 team in the country when most of the roster was intact. Four games later, Azzi Fudd was out for the year with a torn ACL and Caroline Ducharme was indefinitely unavailable because of ongoing head and neck issues.
Sophom*ore forward Ayanna Patterson opted to have season-ending surgery in December for patellar tendonitis that had lingered since high school, and Griffin’s ACL tear on Jan. 3 felt like a new low for the eight active players remaining. Bueckers said she sat down with Auriemma after Griffin was ruled out, and he emphasized finishing the season with gratitude at the forefront.
“I remember we had a conversation after Aubrey’s injury of just wanting to appreciate what we do have and being grateful for what we do have and continuing to be confident,” Bueckers said. “He embodied that and instilled that in us, that no matter who we had out on the court we could get it done. He demanded so much of us that we started to believe it.”
The Huskies are poised to come back as strong as ever in 2024-25, especially after landing a commitment from No. 1 2024 prospect Sarah Strong on Saturday. The Naismith High School Player of the Year could contribute immediately for the Huskies as both an elite paint presence and passer, helping to fill the holes left in the lineup by Edwards and Muhl. Strong’s commitment makes UConn the only program with three top-20 players in next year’s freshman class, joining No. 4 Allie Ziebell and No. 18 Morgan Cheli.
It has been eight years since the Huskies’ last national championship, and Friday’s loss came on the anniversary of Breanna Stewart’s fourth consecutive title over Syracuse in 2016. But Auriemma has no doubts that reports of UConn’s downfall are greatly overstated, and the Huskies backed that up this season. Despite a 4-3 start, its worst national ranking in 30 years, its lowest NCAA Tournament seed since 2005, UConn never flinched when the stakes were the highest.
“The expectations at UConn are what they are because we created them … What pisses me off is the minute we don’t win a national championship for a couple of years, people think that our program is now less worthy,” Auriemma said. “But again, that’s the world we created. And we might not win a national championship, but we’re usually right there when it’s being decided, and that’s all that matters … This is the first time that we’ve come here where it feels like we’re the visitors, where it feels like we’re actually the underdogs and no one expects us to win.
“Getting here was the hardest part, and you appreciate that so much.”
