Five years in Storrs. Four Final Fours. Three years of sorrow. Two that ended with major injuries. And finally, finally, a national title.
In his latest match in a uniform of Uconn Huskies, Paige Bueckers moves away a champion, finding peace in a process that ended with the sweetest result: a rout from end to 82-59 propelled by the team that confirmed its disinterested philosophy.
Uconn whipped the ball everywhere on the ground during the confrontation of the title, ending with 18 assists on 30 goals on the ground. Bueckers only totaled 17 points, whilezzi Fudd – which won the most exceptional final player’s prize – and the first -year sensation Sarah Strong paid 24 each.
“It was a story of resilience, gratitude, adversity, overcoming adversity and responding to the challenges of life,” said Bueckers, the former national player of the year, who ended his career with the third most important points in the history of the NCAA female tournament. “Try to feed them to make me a better person, a better player, and to develop my leadership capacities, to be a great teammate and to stand in whom I am.”
Standing Firm has become her mantra in a season when she fought against doubts. Bueckers, a multi-positioning bidirectional threat with few holes in his game, had long played as an altruistic supercomputer, producing the most effective basketball decisions, regardless of their acclamation. She directed the country in the two assists and for the effective percentage of objectives on the ground twice. But after last year’s defeat against Iowa in the last four, its defending nature was criticized, contrasting negatively with the intrepid Caitlin Clark chutzpah, which, in a flash of intuition, sadly rebounded the backer’s ball on an inbound game which ended the UCONN season. Fans, commentators, trolls and even his coach had the same message: Be more selfish. To pull. Control. Bueckers internalized it, says The ringtone‘s Mirin Fader: “I have always tried to find the right middle, but I think that for the moment, and forever, for the rest of my career, I must first put the killer.”
But even coach Geno Auriemma had a hard time with his new mandate for Paige, seeming worried after having had to transport Uconn against North Carolina at the start of the season. Reality, in losses against the USC and Notre Dame, crystallized: great defenses would be Finding a way to limit Bueckers, and Huskies, which won more titles than any team in the history of NCAA on an orchestrated movement base, seemed too disjointed at the start of the season to answer this problem. It was not a Uconn basketball. It was not Paige.
In addition to that, to work against his values in the hope of becoming the player that other people wanted it to be only trained. The days of play began to fill it with anxiety, she told Alexa Philippou d’Espn. Bueckers and Uconn needed a different response to the enigma of his battle against perfectionism. At Auriemma, Bueckers began to see a sport psychologist, who helped her find gratitude and meaning in the moment – her difficulties, her triumphs and her obstacles – when she has undertaken her last university game season.
“The dinners, the lunches, going back to our rooms and order a dessert together, dragging on the roof, playing the ping-pong, sitting in the sauna suffering together because we are so hot, or sitting in the cold bathtub by crying because it is so cold,” said Bueckers before the Final Four. “Each part of this, I just like. And I’m going to miss everything.”
Over time, her evolution has become less to change the way she played and more to change the way she thought. “Last year, I found myself so much in pressures and issues,” she said. “I was so worried about everything that could go wrong, but you can’t even do anything good when I’m so focused on everything that could go wrong.”
With hindsight, Bueckers has moved away the bad lesson from the loss of Iowa. It was not an indictment of his game. It was a testimony to his capacities as a breeding for the ground that a UCONN team decimated by injuries reached the Final Four with a rotation to six players. She didn’t need to dominate the ball or think “shoot first” to get there. In fact, she didn’t need to think at all. When too thoughtful Bueckers, its greatest gift – the ability to analyze everything that happens in the game – obtains a curse. She needed to double her forces and remain present so that she could take advantage of her set of multivariate skills to provide the necessary moment, whether it is hockey help, weak blockage, an offensive rebound in traffic or a wave of traction rider.
Fudd, one of his closest teammates, finally noticed a difference. “I have the impression that you can certainly see a significant change in the player and the person it is this year compared to last year. It definitely has lightness. She just feels freer. She also plays freer, “she said, quoting the explosion of three Paige games, 105 points that built Uconn’s ticket for Tampa.” It’s not selfish-that’s exactly what this team needs. “
The tactical and emotional peak for Bueckers came organically. While his university career was close to his end, his conscience increased. When she scored a 40-point career summit against Oklahoma in Sweet 16, she simply accepted what Raegan Beers gave her, marking a bucket after a bucket with the defense that fell back into the pick-and-rolls. When she scored only 17 against South Carolina in the match for the title on Sunday (rightly so, the same number of points she scored during the defeat of the Final Four of last year), she played the defense again, helping her teammates enjoy the teeming ball pressure that the Gamecocks launched her.
South Carolina opened the match using two disciplined sports defenders in Raven Johnson and Bree Hall to refuse the ball in Bueckers. During the last three seasons, the approach of force in the numbers of the Gamecocks has marked two titles, to the detriment of two transcendent stars in Clark and Bueckers itself. No one was going to delete this dynasty, and Uconn knew it.
The first UCONN points came from Strong, who fell a South Carolina defender against the 3 -point line. A few moments later, out of a kick of Bueckers, Strong threw a cross of crosscourt in Kaitlyn Chen, who led the ball against a fence and made a lay-up. After that, Bueckers nourished Chen, who fell Te-Hina Paopao and found Jana El A Afy on the dump. In five minutes and 30 seconds, the five beginners Uconn had marked. UCONN defeated South Carolina in the way in which South Carolina is beating its opponents, dismanting one of the most versatile defenses in the nation with waves of multivariate notation attacks.
“There are a lot of stories that people can write about you. There are a lot of people who can try to put you in a box and label this, that you have to be like this person. You must be more aggressive, less passive, but standing, and we were, I think you saw a great representation of this this evening, in terms of: we have made our way,” said Bueckers. “I did it in my own way, trusting my teammates, making the right pass, feeding on all those who are hot that evening.”
Bueckers learned and adapted from her previous failures of Final Four, but she hung on to her basketball philosophy and her reason for being an altruistic and edifying teammate. Huskies, therefore, are back to the top of the world of women’s basketball for the first time since 2016.
While riding the ladder to Amalie Arena, finally summarizing the mountain that she rose all these years, Bueckers leaned to reach the inner part of the edge and cut a small piece of the net, no bigger or smaller than that of her teammates.
Seerat Sohi
Seerat Sohi covers the NBA, WNBA and women’s university basketball for ringtone. Its old trampling land includes Yahoo Sports, SB Nation and basements all over EDMONTON.
