Paige Bueckers Looks to Find 'Balance' Within Different UConn Offensive Roles
The UConn Huskies women's basketball team suffered its first defeat of their 2024-25 NCAA season on Thursday after they lost 79-68 to the Notre Dame Fighting Irish.
UConn star guard Paige Bueckers finished the game with 25 points on 11 of 20 shooting from the field. While she struggled at times to find her flow and not force offense, she was the only consistent source of offense the Huskies had all evening.
Throughout her collegiate career, Bueckers has been burdened with the responsibility of creating much of UConn's scoring, which has put a lot of pressure on her shoulders. While Bueckers has a better supporting cast around her this season — including star freshman Sarah Strong, elite (albeit injured) sharpshooter Azzi Fudd, and Princeton graduate transfer Kaitlyn Chen, who is a true point guard and has allowed Bueckers to play off of the ball much more than she did last season — Geno Auriemma's offense still revolves around her.
But Bueckers got honest about finding her flow between playing off-ball more this season when speaking with UCTV Sports.
"Being on-ball the entire time is probably easier to guard than moving off the ball, [because you] continue to work to try and get other people open, screen, cut, and play within the flow of the offense," Bueckers said, per X user @aysiacchanell.
"There's times too where you get the ball and you make plays, you distribute, you get to the rack and create from there.
"Again, always just trying to find that balance," She added.
paige talking about how she’s always trying to find that balance between playing on ball and off ball pic.twitter.com/icdrp3sZ4w
— aysia (@aysiacchanell) December 13, 2024
Bueckers will look to find that perfect on-ball/off-ball balance during UConn's game against Georgetown on December 15.
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.