You don’t go to UConn to lose. You go to UConn to win at the highest level, and, if you don’t, it will haunt you for the rest of your life. Playing for UConn always comes with a lot of expectations and pressure, but sometimes players also have extra motivation.
For the past two seasons, that extra motivation has been Paige Bueckers. She only had one thing left to do in her senior season: win a national championship. So, it was the team’s mission to cross that off her bucket list. This season, Geno Auriemma believes his players are desperate to prove they can still win without Bueckers.
“I think Paige is still in the picture today because I think they would be really pissed if we didn’t win this thing at the threat of her saying, ‘I knew you couldn’t do it without me,’” Auriemma said after UConn clinched the Big East title. “And that probably motivates them more than anything. Their respect for her is so great that I think they probably went into this season with that spectre of, well, they just lost arguably the best player in the country last year, and there’s no way that they can repeat, and I think there’s a real drive in them to prove that we’re worthy.”
Bueckers led the Huskies to a title last season. If UConn wins another championship this year, Bueckers’s fingerprints will also be all over that one.
UConn stomached Bueckers’s departure well
Losing a generational talent to the pros can gut a college program. The Huskies haven’t been very bothered by Bueckers’s absence and just kept on winning. They haven’t lost a single game yet. At this point, the question is just who can really challenge UConn for this year’s national championship. Is it South Carolina? Can Texas, Vanderbilt, or UCLA make a run and topple the defending champions?
There are many reasons for UConn’s dominance this season.
Sarah Strong is the next generational talent in a program that prepared Diana Taurasi, Maya Moore, Breanna Stewart, and Paige Bueckers, among others, for the pro game. The sophomore is averaging 18.5 points, 7.6 rebounds, 4.2 assists, 3.4 steals, and 1.6 blocks. She leads the team in every major statistical category except for assists. Those numbers don’t just make her one of the front-runners for the Player of the Year award, but they also look hauntingly similar to Maya Moore’s second-year averages.
Azzi Fudd, who may be the number-one pick in the next WNBA Draft, is the team’s second-leading scorer and arguably the best 3-point shooter in the country.
Moreover, KK Arnold has really grown into her role as the starting point guard, freshman Blanca Quinonez already looks like the next UConn star in the making, and everyone else plays their role so well that the team functions like a well-oiled machine.