Tampa, Florida – does not talk about heritage in Uconn. There is no sense. Why recognize obvious? Because in Uconn, talking about the importance of national championships not taking into account the elephant in the room; The room is an elephant. He’s a standard bearer, whether you say it out loud. And anyone who goes through these doors in Uconn is for this exact reason.
In the storrs, the minimum expectation is perfection, the goal is perfection. There is no lack of reminders. The gym is bounded by a chair from each of the final of Huskies (they will soon add 24 chairs, clearly decorated with gray -green and yellow from Tampa). When visitors enter the gym, they can choose a chair from the Minneapolis finals from 1995 or from 2009 Final Four or from 2016 Indianapolis. It is like the finest flex from music chairs for a basketball fan. Banners hang on the walls for all Americans and National Championships. The names that look down at the players of these banners are not just known, they are some of the most decorated and most famous basketball players of all time at any level.
And this is a practical gym.
He has an intention. These relics and honors are not rescued for the Gampel Pavilion, where Huskies play their home games or for the museum on academic ground. Instead, these reminders are placed in the same place where UConn players play endless hours during their career, where they sweat, where they shouted Geno Auriemma for mistakes.
Somewhere along the distant side line, Auriemma was echoing from his stimulation, he went far into the hardwood when he cursed turnover and bad passages and every other mistake that had ever stood between Huskies and their next victory.
Because he knows it wasn’t really in Minneapolis or St. Louis or Indianapolis, where Huskies won their national championships, even though they raised trophies there. It was here, in this practical gym surrounded by these expectations, where they set mistakes and earned these titles.
That’s why Paige Bueckers came to Uconn. Add her name to the wall with Maya Moore and Diana Taurasi and Breanna Stewart to bring more national championships to Storrs. As a triple all-American and 2021 National Player of the Year, its banners will be added as soon as the campus leaves this spring. It will be part of a group that loads a chair from Tampa.
But she didn’t win the national title. She approached. In her three previous trips to Final Four and Bueckers once advanced to the title game. Huskies lost in South Carolina.
On Sunday, what will be the last 40 minutes of his college career, get the last to go to Gamecocks and one last opportunity to bring home the National Championship to Uconn.
“Anything less than the national championship is really disappointing … pressure is a privilege”
Paige Bueckers with your thoughts of playing for Uconn: pic.twitter.com/tzlmehofv
– UConn On Dreams (@Snyuconn) 3rd April 2025
But she and Auriemma don’t talk about it. Since they entered the campus in 2020, they have left since 2020 as the highest recruitment of the nation, and the player, which many believed to be the first to lead Huskies back to the promised country, given their national name “drought” that existed since 2016. Good enough to get into a significant distance.
The only moment when Auriemma brings Bueckers’ championships (or their lack) from his track to the side line in a practical gym when he is too heavy with his mistakes and stubborn decisions.
“That’s why you have never won the National Championship and you will never be!” will scream.
“Every day in practice, when she does stupid things she has done as a newcomer, it’s the only time I raise it,” Auriemma said. “As a reminder that every day and year you have to postpone the things you did as a newcomer and Sophomore.”
Auriemma won 11 national titles, but the Bueckers did not win any. His next national title?
“I don’t know it has any impact on my life before I felt that I was still able to have an impact at my age and how long I have been doing,” Auriemma said. “But it certainly affects her life and what he wants to dream of, because she picked up basketball.”
This autumn before the season, Auriemma sat in her office and described in detail the problems in Bueckers’ play. For him, it is both therapeutic and productive to go through, because in a way it is the only way forward.
The best way to get to 1 for Bueckers is to talk about it, but instead talk about what holds it back and let it work through these problems under the shadows of banners in their practical gym.
“I think it scares it to leave here and be the best player who ever played Uconn without winning the National Championship,” Auriemma said this autumn, looking at the practical gym. “It affects your inheritance a bit. I never said it and I don’t believe it, but I have to believe it thinks. It needs to verify who it is … but I don’t believe it is the final identifier of what is a real success.”
Bueckers played in her fourth straight finals. Can it bring the trophy back to Storrs?
For Auriemma, Bueckers’ heritage is cemented no matter what is happening on Sunday – in how she was responsible for her team and her growth, for becoming one of the faces of sport at the time of constant flow and changes, for who she had happened and was for her teammates.
Even as one of the most famous basketball players in the ground, Bueckers rose before dawn to make breakfast for his teammate Jan El Alpha during Ramadan. While Huskies were in Spokane for Regional last week, she celebrated with El Alfy by bringing her ice vanilla latte and scone on Eid al-Fitr because El Alpha quickly broke her monthly. Auriemma saw Bueckers out of the way this autumn to write a list of five priorities for Sophomore Qadence Samuels, who plays less than six minutes of play to improve. He saw how he pulled the Led Brady aside after the Big East Bueckers tournament to breathe confidence when Huskies prepared for their postseason run. When Brady’s trust was low, Bueckers sent her a message and offered support, and then appeared in Brady’s apartment to make sure she understood how helpful she was for the team’s success.
In their own respects, even from a practical gym, these are all the signs that years of frustration and shouts of Auriemmy (“That’s why you have never won the National Championship and you will never be!”) They work. Slowly, even Bueckers – who Auriemma will quote as one of his most bad people he trained (Ahem, one recognized) – understood why he didn’t talk about championships and heritage.
“Every day you enter the gym, you are trying to live according to the standard of playing basketball, but you do not compare to other teams, players before,” said Bueckers. “We are trying to be the best team, we are currently in a given night.”
On Friday evening, in the Uconn Vintage performance, when Huskies defeated the UCLA 85-51 in Final Four, Bueckers had a quiet night according to their recent standards: 16 points, five rebounds, two assists, zero turn. After reporting the biggest win in the last four history (Uconn also holds the top three), Auriemma said, “I don’t think we made a mistake all night, especially at the defense end.”
When she crawled on Saturday morning on Friday evening and Huskies got further from the victory of UCLA and closer to the game of South Carolina, Auriemma was thinking about an interview he had with Svetlana Abrosim. Her name hangs on the wall like all-American and its impact on the National Championship 2000-Druhý Huskies-is obvious. At that time, Auriemma talked about the national championships with her best players every week.
“She finally told me,” Auriemma said, “how only Russian,” why are we talking about championships? Everyone knows why we were here. Stop it. “
So he did it. Then they won another 10. On Sunday against South Carolina, Huskies will have a chance to add one more.
Bueckers will have the 40 last minutes to embark on her legacy and lift the trophy in Tampa, which will eventually be won for her in the last five years in the practical gym in Storrs.
(PHOTO PAIGE BUECKERS: C. Morgan Engel / NCAA Photos through Getty Images)
