Azzi Fudd returning to UConn next season

While UConn women’s basketball still has business to take care on the current campaign, its 2025-26 roster just got a major boost. On Tuesday, graduate guard Azzi Fudd announced that she’ll return to the Huskies next season.

Fudd was eligible to enter the 2025 WNBA Draft, where most mock drafts projected her as a first round pick. Instead, she’ll use her last year at UConn in hopes of boosting her stock even further.

Despite being viewed as a generational talent out of high school as the top player in the class of 2021, Fudd’s college career has been plagued by injuries. She missed 11 games with a foot issue as a freshman, 22 games with a pair of knee injuries as a sophomore then only made it two games into her junior year before tearing her ACL.

Fudd returned to game action on Nov. 20 but went down again with a knee sprain on Dec. 7. She sat out another three games but since then has appeared in 25 straight contests, the longest such stretch of her career.

On the season, Fudd is averaging 13.2 points while shooting 48.5 percent overall and 44.8 percent from three, though those numbers jump to 15.6 points on 52.4 percent shooting overall and 50.0 percent from three since Jan. 8 — the first game after Paige Bueckers went down with a knee sprain and the clear turning point in Fudd’s season.

While she didn’t have to declare for the WNBA Draft until April 1 or 48 hours after UConn’s final game — whichever comes later — Geno Auriemma said the team needed to know after the Big East Tournament so the team could begin its roster-building efforts.

Now that she’s back, the outlook for the Huskies’ 2025-26 campaign changes dramatically. They will have two superstars in Fudd and Sarah Strong, a pair of impressive juniors in KK Arnold and Ashlynn Shade as well as some other solid pieces.

UConn currently has one scholarship open (though that could be two if anyone transfers), which should be used to target another ball-handler to play alongside Arnold and a quality big.