Less than 24 hours after leading the UConn women’s basketball team to a 30th consecutive Sweet 16 appearance, superstar guard Paige Bueckers was named a finalist for the Naismith Player of the Year on Tuesday for the second time in her career.
Bueckers, a redshirt junior, became the first freshman ever to win the Naismith Trophy in 2021, but her sophomore and junior seasons were marred by injury. She missed 19 games in 2021-22 to undergo surgery on a tibial plateau fracture and returned for in postseason to lead UConn to the NCAA championship game, then sat out all of 2022-23 with a torn ACL.
The Huskies star has made a remarkable comeback in 2023-24, earning Big East Player of the Year and unanimous first team All-American honors. She won the Nancy Lieberman Award for the nation’s best point guard in 2021, but a plague of injuries on UConn’s roster forced her to play most of her minutes out of position this season. She is still a finalist for the Ann Meyers Drysdale Award given to the top shooting guard in the country, and she made the 15-player national ballot for the Wooden Award.
Bueckers is averaging a career-best 21.8 points per game plus 5.1 rebounds and 3.9 assists, 2.2 steals and 1.4 blocks per game, and her postseason performances thus far have reached another level of dominance. In five games since the start of the Big East Tournament, Bueckers has averaged 28.6 points, 9.2 rebounds, 5.2 assists and 3.2 steals. She scored a season-high 32 points in UConn’s 72-64 win over Syracuse in the second round of the NCAA Tournament on Monday.
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“We have the best player in the country, and I’m just saying that because the numbers, in this world of analytics, the numbers say that she is. The whole stat sheet says that she is, and everybody that watched knows it,” coach Geno Auriemma said postgame. “The stats will tell you one thing: The ten rebounds, the six assists and the four steals. But it’s when they happen and how they impact the game that’s so remarkable. I think this team will go as far as she’s able to carry that kind of a lead.”
Bueckers is one of four finalists for Player of the Year alongside Iowa guard Caitlin Clark, USC freshman JuJu Watkins and Stanford center Cameron Brink. Clark is a three-time finalist and the Naismith Trophy favorite for a second consecutive season after winning it in 2023.
All four players are still competing in the NCAA Tournament, and USC is the top seed in UConn’s Portland 3 bracket, so Bueckers could go head-to-head with the Trojans’ freshman as soon as the Elite Eight. First, the 3-seed Huskies have to get through 7-seed Duke in the Sweet 16 on Saturday (8 p.m., ESPN) at Portland’s Moda Center.