Geno Auriemma Lists Intangible Way Paige Bueckers Must Help UConn in NCAA Tournament
The UConn Huskies women's basketball team is now four days away from their first game of the 2025 NCAA Tournament, where they'll face No. 15 seed Arkansas State on March 22 at 1 pm ET.
There are a lot of hopes and expectations for what the Huskies can do this postseason. And most of those hopes lie on star guard Paige Bueckers, who is unquestionably one of the best players in the country and will have to play like it if UConn is to hoist their first NCAA National Championship trophy since the 2016 season.
Huskies head coach Geno Auriemma was interviewed on a March 17 episode of ESPN. And at one point, he spoke at length about what he'll need from Bueckers over the next few weeks.
"Now she knows the drill, she knows exactly what's coming ahead of her," Auriemma said of Bueckers when asked how he coaches Bueckers now compared to her freshman year. "I think more of getting her to apply what she has learned to the other players on the floor that don't have the same level of experience."
He then added, "We go into this NCAA Tournament game on Saturday, Paige is starting, Sarah [Strong] is new, Kaitlyn Chen is new, Azzi [Fudd] didn't play last year, Jana [El Alfy] didn't play last year. It's a lot of new faces on our team.
"So Paige needs to help that whole process along," he continued.
geno talking about the difference coaching paige her freshman year to now and basically saying she’s in a leadership role and applying what she’s learned to the other players who didn’t play and the freshman. pic.twitter.com/ec4mBukFvy
— aysia (@aysiacchanell) March 18, 2025
Given the growth Bueckers has shown as a leader across her UConn career, it isn't tough to imagine she'll be able to help her Huskies teammates in this way.
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Grant Young covers Women’s Basketball, the New York Yankees, and the New York Mets for Sports Illustrated’s ‘On SI’ sites. He holds an MFA degree in creative writing from the University of San Francisco (USF), where he also graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in Marketing and played on USF’s Division I baseball team for five years. However, he now prefers Angel Reese to Angels in the Outfield.