STORRS – Paige Bueckers’ freshman year was the COVID season, when the UConn women’s basketball team played in an eerily empty Gampel Pavilion with no fans.
“I remember the fake crowd noise, the cardboard cutouts (of fans),” Bueckers said. “People were paying to have their face in the stands. There were dogs and animals, too. When you look back, it was unreal to think that we were playing in those circumstances and those times.
“We’ve talked about it as a team – how crazy would that game have been if we had fans and the support and that loud atmosphere we have now.
“It makes you extremely grateful.”
Monday night, it was so loud at sold-out Gampel Pavilion that, at times, Bueckers couldn’t hear the referees’ whistles. She got a standing ovation from the 10,299 when she left the NCAA Tournament second round game, a 91-57 win over South Dakota State, with a little over three minutes left after tying her career scoring record point total with 34.
She took the microphone and thanked the crowd after the game.
“I’ve had the time of my life here,” she said. “Thank you for making this my second home.”
But Bueckers, who eviscerated the South Dakota State defense in the first quarter with a series of pullup jumpers and a dagger 3-pointer a second before the first-quarter buzzer sounded, was not feeling particularly sentimental Monday night. There was plenty of unfinished business ahead for the Huskies, a trip to Spokane, Wash. for the regional semifinals looming and another potential trip to the Final Four. They’ll face No. 3 seed Oklahoma in the Sweet 16 on Friday (5:30 p.m., ESPN).
“I haven’t had a wave or rush of emotions hit me yet because we’re so locked in and focused on the task at hand and being present in the moment, we didn’t look at it as our last game as Gampel,” she said. “We looked at it as the second round NCAA Tournament game that we’re trying to win and trying to keep advancing.
“I’m sure we’ll have more time to reflect on it when the season is over but right now we’re super focused on the present.”
She missed her first two shots and UConn trailed, 10-4, midway through the first quarter. The Bueckers onslaught started when she ripped a rebound away from South Dakota State’s Haleigh Timmer, then drove the lane and got fouled and hit two free throws. She proceeded to score UConn’s last 10 points in the quarter and when she hit the 3, she pounded on her chest and UConn led 19-14.
“My teammates kept feeding me the ball, they kept screening for me, getting me open,” Bueckers said. “We had a good rhythm offensively.
“I was just going. I wasn’t thinking. Going with the flow.”
Kaitlyn Chen, the graduate student transfer from Princeton, also played her last game at Gampel. She wasn’t surprised by Buecker’s performance.
“It was Paige’s last Gampel game, she had to go off, right?” Chen said. “She makes it look so easy. It was the easiest 34 points.”
Neither was Aubrey Griffin, who also played her last game at Gampel Monday night and also got a big ovation.
“Just the way she went out was amazing,” Griffin said. “I’m super happy for her. She was just doing Paige things.”
UConn guard Paige Bueckers addresses fans after her last game at Gampel Pavilion at the end of a second round game against South Dakota State in the NCAA college basketball tournament, Monday, March 24, 2025, in Storrs, Conn. (AP Photo/Jessica Hill)
Bueckers’ previous NCAA Tournament high was 32 points against Syracuse in the second-round NCAA Tournament game last year at Gampel; her career high came against Arkansas in November of 2021.
When Bueckers – who shot 14 for 21 from the field and also had four assists and four steals – left the game late in the third quarter, she had 32 points. Auriemma called her off the bench to go back in with 5:50 left in the game but he said it wasn’t about scoring.
“I wanted her to feel one last time what it feels like to come off the court with that sense of appreciation from the fans, you know?” he said. “I tried to get her out earlier, but TV time-outs and all this other stuff. No, points had nothing to do with it. There was a game earlier this year where she needed one more for a triple-double and she had already come out of the game, and I wasn’t putting her back in.”
What Bueckers mainly felt Monday, she said, was “a whole bunch of gratitude.”
“Just to be here with my team, my coaches, the people who have been here every step of the way. You think about the journey, how that is the reward, the relationships are the reward, the bonds I’ve been able to create – you think about all that and I am extremely grateful to have been in a place like this.”
Originally Published: March 25, 2025 at 6:00 AM EDT
