UConn coach Geno Auriemma says his team will go as far in the NCAA Tournament as Paige Bueckers will take them. Hopkins High School knows how that goes. And Monday, Bueckers showed she's not playing second fiddle to anyone.
Bueckers, the Hopkins, Minnesota native, tied her season high with 32 points, freshman Ashlynn Shade added 19 and No. 3 seed UConn held off Syracuse 72-64 to earn a 30th straight trip to the Sweet 16.
Caitlin Clark is getting all the attention in Iowa these days, but Bueckers appears fully recovered from the injuries that derailed her last two seasons in Connecticut. It was the All-American and former National Player of the Year's fifth straight game with at least 25 points, and seventh in her last eight games.
“The stats will tell you one thing, you know? The 10 rebounds, six assists and the four steals,” Auriemma said. “But it’s like when they happen and how they impact the game that’s so remarkable.”
It's easy to forget how good, and how much of a draw, Paige Bueckers was when she burst onto the college basketball scene. Bueckers was the number one recruit in the country coming out of high school in Minnesota, and was the Gatorade National Player of the Year as a freshman at UConn. Despite being injured for the bulk of the 2021-22 season, she returned just in time to push UConn to the Final Four in her hometown of Minneapolis.
That didn't end the way she hoped, with a loss in the finals to South Carolina, but it drew huge crowds at Target Center cheering on the new hero of college hoops.
"I think it's quite possible, if Paige doesn't have the injuries and the two seasons where she missed a lot of time, we're still talking about Paige Bueckers," says WCCO's Henry Lake. "Because we were talking about Paige Bueckers before we talked about Caitlin Clark. And she's just that good. She's an amazing basketball player. This is not to knock Caitlin Clark, but when she was a freshman, Bueckers was the talk of college basketball."
Aaliyah Edwards finished with 11 points and 11 rebounds and freshman KK Arnold had 10 points including a key 3-pointer late in the game to help seal the win for the Huskies (31-5).
Dyaisha Fair scored 18 of her 20 points in the second half, after hitting just one of seven shots in the first, and Syracuse (24-8) came back from a 12-point first half deficit to pull within two with just under two minutes left.
Fair closes her career with 3,403 points, moving into third place on the all-time Division I scoring list, a point ahead of former Ohio State star Kelsey Mitchell.
UConn led by 11 points at halftime and Shade’s 3-pointer from the right corner, her fourth of the night, gave the Huskies a 53-44 lead heading into the fourth quarter.
But after UConn pushed that lead to 10 points, Husky point guard Nika Muhl, who had been guarding Fair, picked up three fouls in 30 seconds and fouled out of the game with UConn up 63-55.
“We called a huddle and we were, like, all right, we’ve got to band together, we’ve really got to focus and lock in the same way we did when Aaliyah went out (with a broken nose) for the Big East Tournament,” Bueckers said. “You just get hyper-focused, hyper locked-in and we just didn’t want our season to end. I thought we responded much better, in a much better way.”
Bueckers, who was a first-team All-American, had 20 points before intermission and her shot with three seconds left in the half sent the teams to the locker room with UConn leading 39-28.
BIG PICTURE: Bueckers’ 32 points was the most she’s ever scored in an NCAA Tournament game.
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The Huskies will face No. 7 Duke in Portland. The Blue Devils defeated No. 2 Ohio State in Sunday’s second round.
As for Iowa and Clark, she scored 32 points to help the No. 1 seed Hawkeyes survive one of its worst offensive performances of the season to beat No. 8 seed West Virginia 64-54 on Monday night, advancing them to the Sweet 16.
If you're looking ahead and wondering if there is a Bueckers vs. Clark matchup in the future? It would be in the Final Four in the National Semifinals. Two more wins for that dream matchup for women's college hoops fans.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
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