Spokane, Washington – When Paige Bueckers and Geno Auriemma sit in the platform after hitting their ticket for Tampa for the Final Four, Auriemma showed the box score on a sheet of paper. Not to the fact that she played 40 minutes or scored a summit of 31 points. Not at 50% shooting beyond the line of 3 points or its nine mistakes drawn or its two blocks or its six assists.
He showed his four reversals and shook his head. “What was that?” He asked her.
She quickly underlined the reversal column – a top of four interceptions.
“Look,” she said. “I got it. I had four interceptions. “
He laughed because he knew she was not mistaken (although he probably wouldn’t go so far to say that she was right). Bueckers recovered a lot in this match for herself and her teammates, smoothed the difficult patches and was the player who, each time that Auriemma was too deep in the team’s mistakes, could bring him back.
“His mentality is always: that’s what I did to help us win. I don’t worry what was other things,” said Auriemma. “I admired this in her forever.”
The 24th Final Four for Geno Auriemma and the Huskies pic.twitter.com/riei1i74dx
– Uconn Women’s Basketball (@uconnwbb) April 1, 2025
In this way, Bueckers is the Yang of Auriemma yin. It was a coach who had his career in the preparation of the worst case. Once, after having finished one of the six undefeated seasons of the Huskies, he spent the bus to return to the campus (with a trophy of the national trailer championship), trying to understand what was wrong so that they could be even better next year. Although he can tell you all the ways that a game could have or should have or almost in hell in hand basketball, it is Bueckers – the perpetual optimist – who reminds him that Uconn spent this outing on the highway a long time ago and found himself somewhere.
Monday evening, the performance of Bueckers – Yes, including these reversals – was always good enough for a path to Tampa. And, for the 24th time in the career of Auriemma and the fourth of Bueckers’, Uconn goes to the Final Four.
Uconn players threw confetti on top of each other while they were in family and friends, but there was no pump and major circumstances for the occasion, no exaggerated celebration after Uconn beat USC 78-64 in the elite eight. A team member of the team has carried out the ceremonial task of sticking the UCONN sticker in the 10 -foot poster of the support which shows which team passes in the Final Four. The scales and scissors out to reduce the nets were unused until two arena employees were finally invited to shoot down and store them in the back-shop next to a few unprecedented wooden boxes. They transported them and broke them behind two relief baskets. The UCLA, which had reduced the nets the day before for the first appearance of the Final Four program at the time of the NCAA, had asked for a scale to be returned to Westwood. But Uconn does not reduce the nets for a victory for the Final Four.
Perhaps the optimists in them believe that there are still better nets to recover somewhere on the road. It was a tradition in the program for a long time so that even Auriemma, which could tell you about a recruit that he missed in 1993, cannot even remember his exact origins.
It is the world he has helped to create in Uconn, with help from players like Bueckers. He jokes saying that there is Disneyland, Disney World and Uconn – all the fantastic lands where things that do not make sense still happen. Like 16 Final Fours in 17 years. During a year in the last 17 that the Huskies did not advance in the Final Four, he went to the male tournament instead. Sitting in the stands. Acclaimed for the UCONN male team. At the start, he liked that he did not feel the stress of the coaches on the fringes of losing his head for missed calls and errors. He could separate from hunting in this respect.
Then he realized how much he missed. How much he wanted to believe that he could still help all his players to feel the way these players on the field felt, always on a walk with them in a place where he could punctuate a key line and cut nets at the end of the road.
This is why Bueckers came to Uconn. To go to the FOURS and win national championships. She accomplished the first, but not yet the second. Auriemma did not say it out loud, but it seems obvious how much he wants him for Bueckers. When he gave him the trophy of the regional championship and the senior colleagues after having beaten USC, there was a feeling that there was still a lot to come even if the finish line is in sight. But there is still one more trophy than Bueckers has never held.
He knows what it takes to get there. He went there 11 times.
National titles take at least one (but sometimes more than one) player who has it. A player who assumes the charge and controls the potential of the team. A player who must present himself.
Bueckers is for this team.
She knows that she can because she is the optimist. And he knows that she can because he spent five years indicating all the turnover and the errors and the falls of his game. In the midst of his own difficulties – the seasons derailed by injuries and a tournament of pandemic bubbles, moments when she asked why the chips never seemed to fall on her way – she remained tirelessly, continuing to balance the Auriemme.
Drop the confetti pic.twitter.com/v7bssnpclw
– Uconn Women’s Basketball (@uconnwbb) April 1, 2025
Almost 40 years after his UCONN career, he can trace players who have made an additional brand not only the program but on him. When he became the most winning coach in university basketball in November, some of these players – Maya Moore, Sue Bird, Rebecca Lobo, Diana Taurasi – spoke after the match.
The game is different now, and the world around the game is completely changed. Auriemma remained himself, but it is also different. He is older now, and at some point in the last decade – he cannot indicate exactly when – he has gone to feel as if his players were his children, to feel as if they were his grandchildren.
He saw that Bueckers have sailed in the world of Nile and increasing the fame in female university basketball. It is an exact landscape with unexpected obstacles that no one he has ever had had to face, and he saw Bueckers do it with grace while continuing to raise the program – an almost impossible task given the expectations of perfection that he helped to establish in Storrs.
“In order for her to attract all the attention she receives, have all the requirements of her life, all the expectations of her life, and can always deliver?” Auriemma said after the USC victory. “I thought she was a unique person when I saw her in high school. … I think she is closer to (number) one or two of the most unique players I have ever trained.”
For Auriemma, the opportunity to finally reduce the nets with Bueckers does not only mean that it would win a national championship. This means two other games with her, 80 minutes more of a player who – each time he would slide someone to spoil – would be the one who would remove him from the edge, reminding him: “No, they can do it. They are really good about it. ”
“She always sees the best of everyone,” said Auriemma. “Refreshing.”
While sitting at the platform on Monday evening, after she returned to the locker room to celebrate with his teammates, he continued the person she was for the program. He threw blows because he is Auriemma; How could he not?
But then he looked into the microphone.
“I will really miss him,” he said with a sly smile, catching up. “I can’t say that out loud.”
Maybe they have even more road to travel together – 80 more minutes of games and a last trip at the top of a ladder. There is even more to win, and because Bueckers is drunk, she believes it. And because Auriemma has spent enough time around her in the past five years, you have to think that he believes that she is not mistaken.
(Photo of Paige Bueckers and Geno Auriemma: Steph Chambers / Getty Images)
