NCAA championship: The culmination moment of Paige Bueckers took something more – and his UCONN teammates have delivered

Tampa, Florida – It took a full minute of playing action for Paige Bueckers to descend the Connecticut bench. First of all, she kissed the head coach Geno Auriemma near the marker’s table while the game continued behind her. She continued through coaches and teammates and staff, trying to encapsulate entire relations in cuddles of five seconds. Family and friends stood deeply behind them, as they had done for most of the second half. The arena was deeply in a celebration almost a decade pending.

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It is a championship of fate and the perfect plan of God, said Bueckers. While the Huskies have eliminated one team after another in the past three months, it focused on the faith that everything has happened for a reason. His injuries. Those from Azzi Fudd, the best friend she recruited to join her in Connecticut. The pain of tight calls and maybes which prevented her as well as a single championship when she had realistic plans for many.

As she continued on the way, the submarines of a healthy Uconn team killed time. Those on the bench were waiting for dizzying waiting until the buzzer, waiting for the confetti to fall. Some wandering pieces had moved forward to move forward, a moment of ephemeral hope before everything was settled.

However, now Bueckers left a national champion with a support cast on which she had never been able to rely for the years before when injuries ravaged the list and the plans to the foods above. Celebrations and cheers, the trophy, honors were not won by a singular effort of Bueckers, but a combination of a three -headed attack which included Fudd and Sarah Strong.

The Huskies talked about it as a team before Sunday’s revenge match. They hadn’t played their best game in the tournament yet, and what better time than now?

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“It was fair, I think, an excellent summary of what we have been this season to be a team, to stay connected, every night, it can be someone’s night,” said Bueckers. “And how we play as a team, and I think it was just an excellent performance for that between the last game and this game. So it’s extremely appropriate.”

This 12th championship team is the most emotional of Auriemma’s titles since the very first in 1995, he said. He sent many senior classes, but it was special. It was a longer and more rolling -off ride than they had no choice than to bear.

“I kept thinking that something good should happen because if we were going to lose, it would have already been the case,” said head coach Geno Auriemma. “I don’t think the basketball gods would take us to the end – they were really cruel with some of the children of this team. They have undergone many things that could go wrong in their university career as an art. So they no longer need to hold sorrow.

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Bueckers had never won a championship largely due to health, both his and that of others. She missed a season with an ACL tear. Fudd missed the next with his own ACL tears. When the two played in a national championship match against South Carolina, the same program that the Huskies beat on Sunday, it was fresh to lose one of their key players and with a limited production of Fudd, which had food poisoning. Tim Fudd, Azzi’s father, remembers having seen him “as pale as a ghost” that morning.

Bueckers could not overcome a power alone. And when she had a second chance, she did not have to wear the greatest charge. The South Carolina played her tight, hoping to remove the ball from her hands, and she finished an ineffective 5 ground with 17 points. It was near his production of national title matches in 2022.

But in Tampa on Sunday, Fudd woke up in good health and in the right state of mind. Her parents send her sms before each match, usually with advice. Before the national championship game, Tim’s message told him to have a chip on his shoulder. Start attack and stay on it. Access your traction, defend yourself, bounce back.

“Total domination today,” he read.

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And this time it was. While South Carolina and Uconn exchanged buckets in the first trimester at the furious start, Fudd remained no other. Fudd was aggressive and found his spots, a necessity as a kind of “strange man” in what his father described as a “three -headed monster”. She attempted a good first pointer of first 3, even if he missed, nailed a mid -range jumper and turned a pass from Raven Johnson to mark in the other direction.

“I was like, ok, she does,” Tim Fudd told Yahoo Sports. “It told me right away that it was going to happen.”

The coaches staff felt any tournament that Fudd was the key. If it scored about 16 or more points, Uconn would win. In the title match, she led with 24 points (9 out of 17), five rebounds and three interceptions. It was all by hitting only one pointer at 3, its most important contribution most nights. He came with a third quarter of 11 points, Fudd was credited to the teammates while Uconn put him into cheers and songs.

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“Being able to do it with this group is so incredible,” said Fudd. “I mean, there are a lot of things that – just this season, the ups and downs of the season, but in the past four years, this group has gone through so much adversity together.”

Fudd, who announced that she would return to Uconn for a RedShirt year, won the most remarkable honors of the players.

“We know in a way what we are going to get from Paige,” said Auriemma. “We know in a way what we are going to get from Sarah. Azzi has therefore become the focal point for us who (had to) intervene this evening. And she did beautifully, of course. ”

Strong, the first year, is a constant and experienced the one with 24 points on the most effective shooting performance of the day (10 out of 15, 2 on 3 3FG) alongside 15 rebounds, five assists, two interceptions and three blocks. It set the record for division I for most points in a tournament by a first year.

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“I feel like I did better than what I expected,” said Strong. “It’s cool to (have this record). It would not have happened without my teammates, however.”

As much as her game is on the field, she is as calm and concise. With each response to three sentences, Auriemma encouraged it more. Grow. She will soon be the star of the Huskies, by seeking more for a program that does not want anything, but which always strives more for more.

“Over the next three years, she could be the best player to get out of Uconn,” said South Carolina coach Dawn Staley on Saturday. “And these are strong words, I know. Stewie (Breanna Stewart) won four, right?

She did it, and looked at the celebrations on the ground, lounging in a league drought that was ultimately over. She was the last class to win one, finishing a four -year Bueckers, a Minnesota generational talent, hoped to repeat.

Auriemma said that there were people in his inner circle after this 2016 championship who thought he should have called him and withdraw. He chose not to make and heard the noise that it was someone else’s turn to take over. This name, the image, the resemblance and the transfer portal modified the agreement, which makes it an older coach could not last. That he might not be able to win.

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“I kept thinking, you know, I owe these people to let me see if we can take an entire team, what could happen?” Auriemma said. “Because these people who have been playing against us for the past seven years have not played a team from the University of Connecticut. However, beat Uconn always seemed to be the national championship. For us, it always seemed that, if we had the chance to become healthy, it could be good enough.”

This coincided with the trip to Bueckers when she signed up before the 2020-2010 season. It was the cochery year and she played in front of empty stands, a difficult memory in the aftermath of almost 20,000 in Amalie Arena in what seemed Fudd as a home match. When they reached the last match in 2022, thought Auriemma, maybe if they won, he would have held his promise.

“Because it did not happen, it was almost like a crusade on the part of our coach staff, let’s do that, let’s do that, let’s do this,” said Auriemma. “Who knew that it would happen like that? But I started to trust them. And when I tell you that it’s really out of your hands, it’s really true. All this is in the hands of players who play. And they have troubled today.”

Bueckers, which many former students insisted for Auriemma’s favorite, and his coach exchanged beards all weekend and for years before. She joked when she left the game this last time, Auriemma told her that she loved her and she said that she hated him.

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Auriemma delivered its own joke, engaging in its champion first.

“Today was the first, I think, in five years that all the emotions that have been built in me have come out,” he said. “And they have come out here because for five years that she has been in Connecticut, I have never seen her cry.

“And she could deny him, but she cried because she will miss it.”

One day, she will be back with the rest of the elders, looking at another class hide confetti in hats and holding newspapers while reading “fields again”.