UConn's Sarah Strong and Paige Bueckers Bicker Over Who's Better at Off-Court Game
Despite losing to the now No. 3 ranked Notre Dame Fighting Irish last week, the UConn Huskies women's basketball team are still in a good position to make major noise as the 2024-25 NCAA season progresses.
When the Huskies are clicking, it's usually because their two biggest offensive threats — superstar Paige Bueckers and freshman sensation Sarah Strong — are performing well. These two players are leading UConn in scoring this season (Bueckers is averaging 20 points per game while Strong is averaging 16.1), and the offense typically revolves around them.
While most would have expected this out of Bueckers, Strong making such an immediate impact and seemingly needing no adjustment to thrive in the college game (despite being just 18 years old) has turned heads.
There's no doubt that Strong isn't phased by the platform playing on UConn brings. However, during a postgame press conference, Bueckers relayed one thing Strong still gets "frazzled" by.
"Her video games," Bueckers said with a smile when asked whether she has seen anything that frazzles Strong on or off the court, per Storrs Central. "Like when we're playing Fortnite and a team is pressing us, she gets a little nervous. But yeah, I would just say video games."
This prompted Strong (who was seated next to her) to laugh and say, "Why would you say that?"
Bueckers later added, "She has this poker face to her, where nothing affects her, and you can never see it on her face whatever she's feeling at that moment. So to be able to have that as a freshman is huge."
When Strong was asked whether she wanted to defend herself about the video game comment, she said, "I don't need to. We know who's better [at Fortnite]."
"That wasn't the point," Bueckers said while smiling.
"I don't care. I'm just better than you, so," Strong added.
"Once," said Bueckers.
Not much frazzles Sarah Strong, other than 1 thing according to Paige Bueckers...
— Storrs Central (@StorrsCentral) December 15, 2024
Video games pic.twitter.com/WWpsZ9t8mI
Judging by Bueckers' final word, it seems the two have competed head-to-head before and Strong secured the victory.
Clearly these two like to compete against each other off of the court while complementing each other on it.
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.