Paige Bueckers Previously Performed in Minneapolis

MINNEAPOLIS — Brian Cosgriff first saw Paige Bueckers in her sophomore year during a scrimmage at the University of Minnesota.

He was playing against fourth graders and was “dominant”.

“Paige was a peanut, a tiny little thing,” said Cosgriff, Bueckers’ former head basketball coach at Hopkins High. “As a seventh grader, she was still a hottie, but this time she dominated the junior varsity team.”

That was a common avoidance for the Bueckers until the Final Four in Minneapolis this weekend. Even by tough quarterback standards, Bueckers is a field general who constantly moves and leads to every corner of the field while filling in the gaps that are needed most.

It’s not a peanut anymore. The Bueckers, a sophomore, will seek to take second-seeded Connecticut to their first national title since 2016, from their worst regular season since 2004-5.

For the Bueckers, the moment couldn’t have been more important this weekend, with the potential for a championship and the prospect of a WNBA career that is, if not less obvious, less imminent. The 20-year-old returned to court in late February, two and a half months later. undergoing major knee surgeryand accelerated playtime as UConn ran a title run.

A month ago, he was playing only 13 minutes per game; He played 45 on Monday night when UConn needed double the overtime. Crossing the State of North Carolina In the 8th round.

“I just got really motivated. “We talked to the doctors and people around me and they told me I have a chance to play this season,” he said. “So I was going to do everything I could to get back, get my health back and get back on the field with my team.”

UConn’s game against #1 seed and defending champion Stanford will be a kind of homecoming for Bueckers, who grew up just 15 miles from Target Center, home of the NBA Timberwolves and WNBA Lynx, where he plans to play. Friday night. The significance of the team’s next stop wasn’t lost on the Minnesota native after the Bueckers recorded 15 of 27 points against North Carolina State in overtime on Monday.

The frenzy is one way of describing the Bueckers’ extraordinary trip to Minneapolis.

His college debut at Hopkins came as an eighth-grader when the Bueckers came out of the bench and won the game with seven consecutive three-pointers. “Everybody saw his greatness,” Cosgriff said.

He would go on to lead his team to five back-to-back state championship games and graduate with a 62-game winning streak. Cosgriff said the Bueckers’ performances drew crowds of 4,000 fans to the arena at the school, Minnetonka. The coach trusted him so much that he called him “my coach on the ground.”

“He was very smart, he had a very high basketball IQ,” he said. “He would look for something on the floor and it was so clear I didn’t even have to say anything.”

Early in his time at Hopkins, Cosgriff asked a question: If the Bueckers could play on a college team, which one would it be? His answer was unequivocal: UConn. Cosgriff pointed out former Minnesota Golden Gophers star Marisa Moseley, who became an assistant at UConn when the Bueckers began to gain attention as the top recruit in the country. Moseley and UConn’s coach, Geno Auriemma, responded with an intense recruiting effort.

By the time the Bueckers arrived at UConn, the Huskies began to rely on him for almost everything. In his first year, he led his team on points, assists, steals and 3-point field goal percentage, becoming the first player in UConn history to score 30 points in three consecutive games. Audiences were quick to compare him to other big Huskies like Maya Moore, Sue Bird, Diana Taurasi, and Breanna Stewart. But none of them won the female international player of the year award as a freshman, as Bueckers did for the first time in award history last year.

That’s why expectations were high when he started his second year. The Bueckers came in hot and opened the 2021-22 season with 34 points against Arkansas on November 14. As of December 5, he was averaging 21.2 points, 6.2 assists and 5.5 rebounds.

Then came the injury.

Less than a minute into the Notre Dame game, the Bueckers began dribbling to set up a game. There was no rush, UConn was almost 20 ahead and the game was in the bag. But as he approached the half-court, his left knee bent. Bueckers tried to continue but stumbled to the ground. He blew a whistle, Bueckers punched him in the mouth in pain, and his teammates gathered around him in front of their desks.

Bueckers had an anterior tibial plateau fracture and a lateral meniscus tear.

“I was devastated,” Bueckers said. “I was just trying to make sense of it, trying to find the positive, the light in it. My teammates, my coaches did a really good job helping me. It’s easy to isolate and get upset, but they kept my spirits up.”

Auriemma said he wasn’t sure the Bueckers could play at a high level this season, but said his “positivity” has accelerated his recovery.

“Two weeks ago he said to me, ‘Can Paige play 40 minutes in two overtime games against the best team we’ve played in this tournament last Monday night?’ If you had asked, I would have. Say, ‘No, he can’t,'” he said on Tuesday. “But as the game went on, it just got better.”

“He does things that are hard to explain,” he added.

Hopkins women’s basketball coach Tara Starks, who has known Bueckers since fourth grade, credits her success to her consistency on and off the court.

“You always know what you’re going to get with it,” Starks said. “She’s been exactly the same since she was a kid. He has always been extremely loyal and protective of the people he is closest to.”

Bueckers adopted the NCAA’s new name, image, and likeness rules, becoming the first college athlete to be signed by Gatorade, among other lucrative deals. She has also used her reach to bring attention to issues close to her, including gender and racial equality. Bueckers’ nine-year-old brother, Drew, has a Black mother and white father, and after Black men and women were killed by police in the summer of 2020, Bueckers used Instagram to call for change.

“At what point do they stop looking at my brother as a threat to society rather than as a cute kid?” Wrote. “It scares me. I’ll work for change, little brother. I want you to grow up in a world that accepts you for who you are.”

At the 2021 ESPY Awards, Bueckers gave a speech to highlight the Black women in her life and call for better representation in basketball. Starks said he knew “a small part of it was for me.”

“When you see something like this and are able to talk, it is,” he added.

“For better or for worse, Bueckers trusts everything he does,” Starks said.

“He always thinks he has the best moves, even the best dance moves,” Starks said with a laugh. “Sometimes I have to tell him his rhythm is a little off.”