Will Paige Bueckers be part of UConn’s Mount Rushmore? She’s two wins away | USAEMALL.com

PORTLAND, Ore. — The small group of younger ladies standing on the entrance row of Moda Center throughout the courtroom from the largest star within the gymnasium will need to have known as out Paige Bueckers’ title 100 occasions.

They saved on — “PAIGE, PAIGE, PAIGE, PAIGE ” — till UConn guard KK Arnold seen them.

“You should go take a picture with them,” Arnold instructed her teammate. Bueckers shyly headed that manner, as followers clamored for autographs and beamed with pleasure as she delivered.

Bueckers is in contrast to any of Geno Auriemma’s superstars previously, he mentioned earlier this week. On the one hand, the general public can’t get sufficient of her — as was the case once more Monday evening, when she placed on a clinic in opposition to USC within the Elite Eight with 28 factors, 10 rebounds and 6 assists to propel UConn to the Final Four for the twenty third time in program historical past and third time in 4 years.

On the opposite hand, she could be laborious to gauge — internalizing her feelings a lot that Auriemma typically can’t learn her. He has seen her break down precisely as soon as — at Tennessee within the locker room final yr when an ACL harm prevented her from taking part in.

“She doesn’t show it,” Auriemma mentioned. “Other players that I’ve had that were of that level, they walked around like they owned it. They talked like they owned it. … Paige keeps it all inside and lets it come out when it needs to come out.”

In her personal manner, Bueckers let these feelings out Monday evening.

As the seconds ticked off the clock and Bueckers got here down with the ultimate rebound in an epic showdown that includes the No. 3 seed Huskies in opposition to top-seeded USC, she dropped the ball and sprinted towards halfcourt to leap in celebration with teammates. She loosely positioned a Final Four hat atop her head, posed for selfies and waved with each palms to the UConn crowd as she finally skipped towards the tunnel.

There have been occasions final yr, sidelined with harm, when Bueckers pressured herself to search out pleasure outdoors of basketball. Not anymore.

“(The win) was one of the most rewarding feelings I’ve ever felt in my life,” she mentioned.

Now Bueckers is simply two wins away from solidifying herself as certainly one of UConn’s all-time greats. Diana Taurasi, Sue Bird, Breanna Stewart, Maya Moore — every received at the very least two nationwide titles. It’s Bueckers’ flip now, and maybe the duty in entrance of her is much more daunting, contemplating she’s making an attempt to hold the Huskies to their first nationwide championship since 2016 — a dry spell that’s thought of an eon in Storrs, Conn.

“We’ve had some great (UConn players) on that Mount Rushmore,” Auriemma mentioned. “I don’t know that we could fit ‘em all. But yeah — all she needs is to win a national championship. Hopefully we’ll have an opportunity to do that next weekend.”

She’ll share the marquee with Caitlin Clark in Cleveland for one more extremely anticipated girls’s faculty basketball showdown.

In Monday’s star-studded Elite Eight assembly in opposition to USC and freshman sensation JuJu Watkins, Bueckers did all of it for UConn to steal the present. She shot 11 of 23, together with 3-of-6 from past the arc for her 28 factors, only one shy of Watkins. By halftime, Bueckers had 15 factors to Watkins’ 13 because the superstars took turns buying and selling clutch buckets.

Perhaps Bueckers’ most spectacular sequence got here within the third quarter with about 4 minutes to play, when she first hit a seemingly inconceivable turnaround jumper with a defender draped throughout her, then splashed a 3-pointer on the following journey down the courtroom to present UConn a 6-point lead and a momentum swing.

UConn has been famously short-handed this season due to accidents, and Bueckers has performed all 40 minutes in every of the Huskies’ final three video games.

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In addition to the offensive fireworks, when UConn guard Nika Mühl picked up her fourth foul with 3:05 remaining within the third quarter, Bueckers took on probably the most daunting defensive activity of the evening, too, by guarding Watkins.

Auriemma described Watkins because the hardest defensive project any of his guards had drawn this season and presumably at any level of their UConn careers. But though Watkins had her moments in opposition to Bueckers, hitting a few 3s over her, Bueckers appeared to have a solution of her personal to stamp out USC’s momentum.

“Paige always wants to be superhuman. You can’t aspire to be that, but she tries her damndest to be superhuman,” Auriemma mentioned. “When you have players that think like, ‘There’s nothing I can’t do, there’s nothing that escapes me,’ they’re just on another level. They play the game on another level. They think on a different level. They inspire everyone around them.”

In different phrases: “Paige doing Paige things.”

UConn has a cross-country flight again to Storrs, Conn. for a number of days earlier than the Huskies head to the Final Four.

It will probably be must-see TV and Bueckers will once more have the load of a nationwide championship berth on her shoulders. But she will probably be ready.

“For Paige, (the mindset is), ‘This is what I live for. I live for these moments,” Auriemma mentioned. “Every kid has this … fear of, ‘What if I can’t?’ Anybody that tells you there’s not (that fear), they’re lying. But the great ones, they put that in the back of their mind and they just go and they do what they do.”

(Photo of Paige Bueckers: Steph Chambers / Getty Images)