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2 days ago
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The March Menace has a nice ring to it.
Paige Bueckers’ game may have been quiet through the regular season, but it’s screaming loudly when it matters most. In her final collegiate game at Gampel Pavilion, Bueckers exploded for 34 points to lead a 91-57 second-round win over No. 10 South Dakota State.
With one final bucket to tie her career high, she exited to a standing ovation from Huskies faithful and took the mic after the final buzzer to thank them on behalf of the senior class. She is projected to be selected No. 1 by the Dallas Wings in the WNBA Draft next month.
Bueckers doesn’t pack the score line every night as Caitlin Clark, the NCAA’s scoring leader, did at Iowa or as JuJu Watkins does for USC. Nor does she have to for a UConn team entering March healthy for the first time in nearly a decade.
The point guard is instead the picture of efficiency. She is the only player in NCAA, WNBA or NBA with a 50-40-90 shooting line and the best assist-to-turnover ratio, per ESPN Stats and Information. She’s shooting 53.6% overall, 40.4% from 3 and 89.9% from the free throw line with a 3.8 assist-to-turnover ratio.
The career finale at Gampel was her sixth 25-point game in the NCAA tournament, a mark that ties Maya Moore for most by a UConn player in the Big Dance. She is one of three UConn players with 2,000 points, 500 rebounds and 500 assists. Her 2,1,26 points, 521 rebounds and 518 assists put in the company of UConn legends Diana Taurasi and Moore.
The one place she can’t compete is on national championships. Yet.
In a twist of fate no one would want, the road to the national championship may have gotten a little easier on Monday night. Watkins, USC's do-everything all-world offensive wunderkind, went down with what looked like a serious knee injury. The Trojans are the No. 1 seed in UConn's region, meaning they would face each other if both teams advanced to the Elite Eight.
The two teams met at Connecticut's XL Center in December and the Trojans came out on top, though Watkins was the difference in the game with 25 points, six rebounds, five assists and three blocks. Bueckers scored 22 points but didn't shoot particularly well (9-of-22). The Huskies also didn't have Azzi Fudd, who has 44 points and eight steals in two games this tournament after a career littered with injuries that mostly kept her out of March Madness.
So it would be a different matchup altogether if the Huskies and Trojans meet in Spokane in the Elite Eight.
For now, though, Bueckers has her moment, and got to wish a farewell to the UConn faithful — a dream send-off for a Huskies legend.
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