UConn still figuring out what it has beyond Bueckers

The Huskies hope to make up for their lack of experience with depth of talent.

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Daniel Connolly
October 31, 2024

Photo: Ian Bethune

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UConn still figuring out what it has beyond Bueckers

During a recent intra-squad scrimmage, UConn had a 5-6 minute stretch where Paige Bueckers didn’t score a single basket. Even though one of the main storylines this preseason has been the superstar’s increased assertiveness, Geno Auriemma actually viewed it as a positive.

After all, the Huskies knows what they have with Bueckers. They still need to figure what they have beyond her.

“It was a great sign because they always look to her and they need to stop looking to her as often as they do,” Geno Auriemma said at Big East Media Day. “Yesterday was a really good example of that.”

That puts UConn in a paradoxical situation. For the Huskies to reach their ceiling, they need Bueckers to be selfish — but they can’t just defer to her, either. She has to carry the load, but her teammates can’t expect her to do it all.

“When it comes right down to it, that's who they're going to look at and that's who's going to have to carry them,” Auriemma said. “There's no getting away from that.”

This isn’t the first time UConn has dealt with this problem. At the start of the 2021-22 season, the Huskies mostly stood around and watched Bueckers go to work. She set a career high with 34 points in the opener and put up 21.2 points through the first six games. Only one teammate averaged double-figures alongside her.

That got fixed when Bueckers went down with a knee injury that kept her out for the next 2.5 months. UConn will be happy to find a different solution this time around.

Part of that is a product of the team’s inexperience. Bueckers is a superstar entering her fifth year in Storrs. Beyond her, there’s Kaitlyn Chen — who spent three seasons at Princeton but is new to UConn — then four sophomores and four freshmen among the healthy players.

It’s natural that nobody has stepped up among that group just yet, though Auriemma believes Chen and KK Arnold can eventually get there. The return of Azzi Fudd will help, too.

“We have nine players at all can contribute. The big thing is they contribute really good when they're on the floor with Paige, so we gotta find a way to be really good when she's not on the floor,” the coach said. “I think that's where maybe Kaitlyn can help — and KK — and it's really important that we get Azzi back because if we could get in a situation that whenever Paige is not on the floor, Azzi can take on that.”

Last year, UConn got to the Final Four with a paper-thin roster in large part because of its experienced core of Bueckers, Aaliyah Edwards and Nika Mühl. With the latter two gone, the Huskies will now try to do the opposite.

“The talent that I think we have — and we're much deeper — will hopefully offset the lack of experience,” Auriemma said.

Still, with so much youth and players expected to return as the season progresses, UConn won’t look like a finished product in the opener. Some early struggles are inevitable.

“We're going to be a different team while on the floor simply because we have different pieces to work with,” Auriemma said. “So I'm hoping that we start to find our identity sometime in November — end of November.”

The good news? Bueckers is a “safety net” for the rest of the squad, as the coach put it. As the newcomers get settled in and the injured players make their return, the redshirt senior can paper over any issues. After all, she’s gotten the Huskies to the Final Four every year that she’s been healthy.

Regardless of what it looks like at the beginning, UConn expects to be one of the last teams standing so long as it has Bueckers.

“If you look at our Final Four team last year and how we got there — and that we were two points away from playing in the national championship game — that was a testament to just how much that kid can do for a program, a team, and how far she can take you — obviously not by herself,” Auriemma said.

“But putting a player like Paige on your team automatically makes you a national championship contender.

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