Paige Bueckers ran off the court at Spokane Arena with a smile splitting her face and a Final Four hat perched atop her head. She waved to the crowd and headed for the UConn locker room.
The second-seeded Huskies had just beaten No. 1 seeded USC on Monday night behind Bueckers’ 31 points. Little girls shrieked and chanted her name alongside their mothers. Fans wore her famous No. 5 jersey. One held a sign saying she’d woken at 3 a.m. to fly to Washington to see Bueckers play. Another waved an American flag bearing an image of Bueckers’ face.
“Yeah, I don’t get it. I don’t get it,” Huskies coach Geno Auriemma quipped, because if he doesn’t rib his superstar, who else will?
“But it’s crazy.”
This is the orbit Bueckers occupies. With her must-see highlights (including a career-high 40 points in the Sweet 16), 2.2 million Instagram followers and NIL deals with companies such as Gatorade, she’s one of the most beloved players her sport has ever seen. The most famous ponytail in college hoops.
Paige Bueckers in Spokane:
– 35.5 PPG
– 55.6 FG%
– 62.5 3FG%
– 4.5 RPG
– 3.5 APG
– 2.0 BPG
– 3.5 SPGand that’s why she’s your Spokane Region 4 Most Outstanding Player pic.twitter.com/chMguMAjfY
— UConn Women’s Basketball (@UConnWBB) April 1, 2025
But with that level of attention comes an avalanche of pressure. No player in the tournament carries as much weight on her shoulders as Bueckers, UConn’s only superstar without a national championship.
“When you have all that, sometimes there’s a tendency to become, ‘What if I can’t live up to it?’ That’s the biggest worry that I always have,” Auriemma said. “That if a kid gets overwhelmed by the attention and the adulation and the expectation, then you’re always scared, what if at some point she wakes up one morning and goes, ‘What if I can’t live up to it?’”
But Bueckers?
“The sucker never does that.”
That’s because Paige Bueckers — the first freshman to ever win the Naismith award and the presumed No. 1 WNBA Draft pick later this month — lives for these moments.
“It’s so easy for the pressure that she’s under to come through or let that affect you and she doesn’t at all. You never see her waver,” UConn guard and close pal Azzi Fudd said. “I never thought it felt cocky but just confident enough.
“She could have the worst game, but she’s telling herself, ‘The basket was twisted. The basket was left, or lower.’ She’s honestly delusional. But she convinces herself (of) these things. And she’s still the best.”
‘In eighth grade playing varsity’
Bueckers was in middle school, playing against the No. 2 team in the state on former Hopkins coach Brian Cosgriff’s varsity team, when he first started to realize she was no ordinary prospect.
“She came off the bench and hit eight 3s in a row for us to win the game,” Cosgriff said. “And I’ll never forget it because when she was in eighth grade, in the one-on-one conferences I had with her, I said, ‘Paige, if you could go to one place and play basketball, where would it be?’ And she goes, ‘UConn.”‘
Cosgriff called then-Huskies assistant coach Marisa Moseley on the spot to let her know she would soon have film in her inbox.
In that sense, part of Bueckers’ ability to deliver in clutch situations and handle whatever expectations are thrust upon her may simply be the byproduct of clarity: Knowing exactly what she wants and how she plans to get it.
As a fifth-grader, Bueckers was always the friend who planned sleepovers, often dictating how things would go to her friends and volunteering to call their parents to fill them in on what she’d concocted.
“I’m like, ‘Girl, you can’t just be setting up sleepovers at other people’s houses!”‘ Tara Starks, Bueckers’ grassroots coach, recalled. “But … nothing really stepped in the way of that.”
Or maybe she just really is that confident, as Fudd suggested.
“I had a little get-together at the house for my daughter’s birthday, and I think my daughter might have been turning 21, somewhere in there,” Starks said. “And Paige came over.
“‘Dreams and Nightmares’ came on — that Meek Mill song. … And she starts rapping.”
Bueckers was 14. She rapped every word at the top of her lungs in front of Starks’ family and a group of her friends from Hopkins. By the end of the song, everyone in the living room had their hands up, jumping around, ready to party.
“(My family’s) looking like, ‘Man what the hell is this?’” Starks said, laughing. “I spend time with her on a day-to-day basis. And I’m thinking, ‘What in the hell? How do you know this song?’”
“That sounds like something she would do,” Taylor Woodson said.
‘Diana Taurasi reinvented’
Karl-Anthony Towns is the first to admit he wasn’t totally aware of the dynamic at play when Hopkins High met Wayzata High in March 2020 (just before the COVID-19 pandemic broke out).
In his fifth year with the Minnesota Timberwolves at the time, all Towns knew was that he had the day off and the perfect way to spend it.
“I had a time to actually go see (Bueckers) play,” said Towns, now with the New York Knicks. “And I wanted to go see it happen.”
Towns and a few Timberwolves teammates, including D’Angelo Russell, rolled into Hopkins that Thursday night, where Bueckers and the Royals already had plenty on the line against Wayzata. Both were top-five teams in the state, with Hopkins boasting Bueckers, as well as now-Minnesota Golden Gophers guards Amaya Battle and Woodson, now-Stanford forward Nunu Agara and former Arizona guard Maya Nnaji. Wayzata also had a trio of future Gophers in Mara Braun, Annika Stewart and Brynn Senden.
If Hopkins was going to advance to the state title game, it would be because the senior Bueckers delivered in the annual showdown.
“Geno was in the stands. … The Minnesota Timberwolves were there. There were four or 5,000 people,” Cosgriff said.
“Paige took the thing over.”
Midway through the matchup, Hopkins went up by 6 points, Cosgriff remembered. The Trojans — who had previously been in a zone defense — switched to man, hoping for some answers.
“Paige,” Cosgriff and his assistants asked. “What do you want to do?”
Bueckers — whose midrange game is among the most beautiful sights in basketball — chose a simple play the Royals called “Option 1.” A high ball screen that would put the ball in her hands and let her cook.
She ran it every possession for the rest of the night, drilling shot after shot to the tune of 33 points — or “more points than the weather outside,” as Battle joked — in an 86-76 victory.
“She can make an old ball coach look pretty damn good,” Cosgriff said. “She was like, ‘Give me the ball, get the hell out of the way.’ That’s what it was. And everybody, including us coaches, got the hell out of her way.”
Wayzata, meanwhile, had no answers.
“You can sometimes do a box-and-one and that can be effective, but not with Paige Bueckers,” said Wayzata assistant-turned-head coach Julie Stewart.
“It didn’t work that way with her.”
Towns sat in awe as he munched on a box of popcorn courtside and took it all in. The pandemic soon canceled Bueckers’ chance at winning a second consecutive state championship on the heels of a 62-game win streak, but he’d seen enough:
‘”She’s really damn good,’” Towns remembered thinking.
“I thought I was watching Diana Taurasi reinvented.”
‘She is by far the best’
Three months earlier, Liz Carpentier, the head coach at Farmington (Minn.) High, remembers having a similar experience.
Unlike Wayzata, Farmington was not in Hopkins’ section. The Tigers hosted Bueckers and the Royals in a nonconference matchup in early December 2019. But just like Wayzata, Farmington had plenty of talent in its own right. Still, it was obvious who everyone came to see.
“There was not even standing room only. The place was completely packed,” Carpentier said. “That single event has been the most fans that we’ve put in that gym. Boys’ basketball, girls’ basketball, volleyball — there’s never been an atmosphere like that at Farmington.”
Hopkins and Farmington kept the game close for most of the first half. The boys on Carpentier’s practice squad had had a blast simulating Bueckers in practice that week and Farmington had game planned well.
“When you watch her play, her priority first is to get her teammates involved. Then she for sure takes games over in those high-pressure situations,” Carpentier said. “We ended up losing by 19 or 20 that game.”
Hopkins beat Farmington 77-52 on a night Bueckers had 31 points on 14 made field goals to go along with five assists and four steals. Her basketball IQ gave the Tigers fits all night — knowing how to perfectly read ball screens, when to pull up and when to kick out.
But just as impressive to Carpentier was how much fun Bueckers seemed to be having, despite how many eyes were on her and the pressure that came with carrying the state of Minnesota on her back. How free she looked. How she signed every autograph for every little girl in the gym who stayed behind afterward.
“She is by far the best girls basketball player to come out of Minnesota,” Carpentier said. “Just how much press and media and publicity that she’s gained … she handles everything with class and grace.”
‘This is what she’s wanted’
As Bueckers and UConn prepare to take on top overall seed UCLA on Friday night at Amalie Arena, the external expectations will reach an apex for the 23-year-old, who is just 80 minutes away from a potential national title.
Those in her corner try not to bring up what’s on the line — though Starks had a feeling UConn would be in Tampa when she secretly bought her Final Four tickets months ago.
“I worry sometimes about the pressure and all the things going on. I don’t know if I could handle that at that age,” Starks said. “(But) I think the reality of the situation is this is what she’s wanted. And so even though it’s nerve-racking, it might be stressful, it might be a lot — ultimately it’s, this … is exactly what I wanted my basketball career to be.”
To handle the stress, Bueckers has her go-tos.
She loves to read, particularly fiction, and has a shelf of books in her room. She’s a Wordle enthusiast, racing a handful of teammates every day to see who can finish the popular word game first. Gospel music helps calm her down pregame. And cutting out social media has been helpful — even if she occasionally cheats.
“She does love to watch her highlights and her edits,” Fudd said, laughing while she ratted Bueckers out. “So she’ll probably be trying to steal my phone later.”
Should Bueckers win a national championship this weekend, she’d complete the final missing piece of her UConn puzzle. She has made it clear that a national championship is her expectation. Now it’s up to her to handle the hype for two more games.
“I always had this feeling that she wasn’t going to let us lose,” Starks said of Bueckers’ grassroots days. “And that’s kind of the feeling that I have right now.
“I just have that feeling that she’s not gonna let this team lose.”
— The Athletic’s James L. Edwards III contributed to this report.
(Illustration: Dan Goldfarb, John Bradford / The Athletic; photo: Joe Buglewicz / Getty Images)
