UNCASVILLE — UConn star Paige Bueckers wasn’t the only one shaking off rust when she played her first college basketball game in 580 days on Nov. 4: Her mom Amy Fuller hardly remembered what it felt like to cheer for her own daughter.
Fuller watched Bueckers battle back from knee surgery after missing 19 games in 2021-22 to almost single-handedly lead UConn to the NCAA championship game. She experienced the devastation when Bueckers tore her ACL in Aug. 2022, ending her junior season before it began. But as soon as No. 5 took the court in UConn’s preseason exhibition game against Southern Connecticut State, Fuller said it was as if she’d never left.
“It was actually a little weird because it had been taken away for so long that I was just used to coming out here and watching the games with her on the bench doing her cheerleader role,” said Fuller, who lives more than 2,000 miles from Storrs in Billings, Montana. “I came out (for the exhibition) and I was like, this is what I’ve been missing. The bug is back, I need to be at every game. I hate missing any games. But it’s been so wonderful.”
Bueckers was in the midst of a remarkable comeback even before the postseason began, averaging a career-high 20.7 points, 4.4 rebounds, 3.7 assists and 2.1 steals per game during the regular season to earn Big East Player of the Year. But Fuller witnessed perhaps the most rewarding moment yet on the court at Mohegan Sun Arena this weekend as UConn marched to its fourth consecutive Big East Tournament championship: Bueckers was playing with joy again.
Just a hooper from Hopkins, Minnesota pic.twitter.com/eoAX4hdGZP
— UConn Women’s Basketball (@UConnWBB) March 11, 2024
“It’s bittersweet because of what’s happened, but to see her joy on the court like sticking her tongue out, flexing, it was everything,” Fuller said, eyes welling with tears. “It was the first time I saw that spark, that joy — not only in her but the whole team in general. They all looked connected together. They’re having fun … to see them all just step up and play together, win together, I’m getting emotional again.”
From the first week of the season to the Big East title, nothing about Bueckers’s return to the court has been easy. She was the nation’s best point guard in 2020-21 but had to evolve into a power forward for UConn this year amid five season-ending injuries on the roster. Even her best often wasn’t enough early in non-conference play as the Huskies dropped matchups with No. 11 NC State and No. 6 UCLA despite 27 and 31 points respectively from Bueckers.
UConn played the majority of the season with a seven-man rotation, and that quickly became six when Aaliyah Edwards broke her nose in the Big East Tournament quarterfinals. Junior reserve Amari DeBerry has been in concussion protocol since the end of the regular season, leaving redshirt freshman Ice Brady as the lone healthy forward on the team.
Auriemma remembers the locker room “like a morgue” after Aubrey Griffin’s season-ending ACL tear at Creighton on Jan. 3, but the energy was completely different when the Huskies reconvened after beating Providence even as they prepared to play two more games in two days with the minimum number of active players allowed under conference rules.
It meant even more pressure on Bueckers, and she was prepared for it.
“This is the burden of a star that you have to carry. You have to be more prepared and more ready to take the hits that are going to come your way and not complain and whine about it,” Auriemma said. “She wants to be all that and wants people to believe in her, and she wants to please everybody. Kids that want to please everybody end up pleasing nobody. She needed to please herself first (and believe), ‘I deserve it, I own this now.’ I think that’s made all the difference in the world.”
TV cameras zoomed in on Fuller, teary-eyed and doubled over with emotion, as Big East commissioner Val Ackerman handed Buckers the tournament’s Most Outstanding Player trophy after the Huskies beat Georgetown 78-42 on Monday. The senior won the same award as a freshman in 2021, becoming just the fourth player to earn it multiple times in a career and the first since UConn legend Maya Moore won in 2009 and 2011.
The senior scored 27 points shooting 9-for-19 from the field and 4-for-9 from 3-point range while adding four rebounds, three assists, five blocks and three steals in the championship game.
“A year ago I would have done anything to be in basketball shoes instead of streetwear playing in the most important month of basketball, so I’m extremely grateful,” Bueckers told the crowd as she accepted the award. “I wouldn’t be here without God and my teammates and my coaching staff. I just wanted to embrace it and have fun, because I missed it so much the entire year last year, so I’m just extremely grateful to be healthy and playing basketball.”
"I missed it so much the entire year last year, and I'm just extremely grateful to be healthy and playing basketball." @paigebueckers1 becomes the third player ever to repeat @BIGEAST tournament Most Outstanding Player 👏 pic.twitter.com/5Jm7a9rGQI
— FOX College Hoops (@CBBonFOX) March 12, 2024
Though he never misses an opportunity to take a sarcastic jab at his superstar, Auriemma describes Bueckers’s mental fortitude with a degree of awe that feels especially meaningful from a coach with 39 years and 11 national championships worth of experience. He scoffed at the buzzer-beating 3-pointer she drained to end the third quarter of Sunday’s semifinal against Marquette, guaranteeing that Bueckers expected the shot — from several feet behind the arc — to fall as soon as she released it.
“There’s just something in her that I can’t describe … There’s nothing, literally nothing, that she thinks if she set her mind to it she can’t do,” Auriemma said. “It’s remarkable the way players like Paige can summon up exactly what’s needed at any given moment in any given game … We’ve been very fortunate here at Connecticut, but she’s different, and the bigger the game, the more different she becomes. It’s hard to explain sometimes.”
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