TAMPA — Azzi Fudd doesn’t really mess with Brussels sprouts anymore. That’ll happen once you’ve seen them come out of your nose.

That was how the Connecticut women’s basketball star’s freshman season ended, with an illness limiting her during the Huskies’ appearance in the national championship game. She and the Huskies are hoping for better results Sunday when they face South Carolina in the title game again just over three years later. The Gamecocks won that 2022 matchup, 64-49, with Fudd gutting out an inefficient 17 minutes while feeling exhausted.

“That’s exactly why I’m not going to have Brussels sprouts tonight,” Fudd said Saturday.

The Huskies, who have won 11 national titles, are back in a familiar spot thanks in large part to Fudd’s 19 first-half points that jump-started an 85-51 blowout of top overall seed UCLA in a national semifinal Friday. This is the moment Fudd has been building toward since she was a child. She was one of the top prospects in the country at St. John’s College High in D.C., becoming one of the first girls, along with future WNBA star Cameron Brink, to be invited to Stephen Curry’s SC30 Select Camp as a high school sophomore. She was the first sophomore to be named Gatorade national player of the year. Two years later, she was the No. 1 recruit in the nation.

Injuries, however, have been a problem. She tore her ACL and medial collateral ligament while she was still in high school in 2019. She suffered a foot injury as a freshman at Connecticut. Knee injuries limited her to 15 games as a sophomore. Then she tore her ACL and medial meniscus and missed all but two games last season.

And when it wasn’t injuries, it was a Brussels sprout.

There was a slow build after she returned from her most recent knee injuries this season, in terms of minutes and production, but she has played 33 games and started 29. Fudd has tried to appreciate every moment after last season ended before it really began, and she has learned how resilient she can be. She got deeper into her faith and began working with a sports psychologist.

All of that has equated to averaging 13.3 points while shooting a career-high 47.2 percent from the field and 44.6 percent from three-point range. Still, along the way, there were doubts and worries about whether things would ever be the same.

“It was a difficult thing the first time it happened,” Fudd’s father, Tim, said of her injuries. “I was devastated as a parent. Just feeling like I couldn’t help her or protect her from this. But to see her grow and mature and just compartmentalizing the whole process as well, knowing each day is a step closer to getting back on the floor, it was just a methodical work ethic.”

While Tim was a bit of a mess the first time, Fudd’s mother, Katie, picked up the slack and allowed a day for her daughter to feel bad before it was time to get back to work. She said being injured doesn’t stop the work — it means you get better at something else. Both of Fudd’s parents are coaches, and neither wanted her to see them concerned.

The steady work came to a head Friday against the Bruins. Fudd buried jumper after jumper. Catch-and-shoot threes. Midrange buckets curling off screens. Even a banked-in three. All of that propelled Connecticut to a 34-point win in which it never trailed. That returned the program to the final, and this time she can actually be productive.

This version of Fudd is what fans across the country have anticipated, particularly on the biggest stage. Katie and Fudd’s high school coach, Jonathan Scribner, pointed out the midrange game that was her bread and butter still hasn’t fully returned.

Analyst Debbie Antonelli noted the exquisite footwork that allows her to be shot-ready upon catching the ball. It takes her a split second to square her body and get both feet and hips in the ideal position to fire away. Antonelli noticed that happens even on the move, coming off screens, and not just in a stationary catch-and-shoot spot.

This tournament hasn’t been a coming-out party. Antonelli called it a reintroduction to the skill set that everyone knew she had.

“Steph Curry is the best comparison,” Antonelli said. “There’s not another woman that I’ve seen do this. It’s textbook. It’s absolutely perfection. You have to work so hard to do that.”

Now that’s South Carolina’s problem. The pairing is a fun matchup between an offensively blessed Huskies roster with the No. 9 scoring offense in the nation (81.7 points per game) facing a physical Gamecocks group with the No. 2 scoring defense (57.4 points allowed per game) in the SEC.

South Carolina has self-proclaimed members of the “Seatbelt Gang” that locks down opponents, led by junior guard Raven Johnson. They face a tall task against expected No. 1 WNBA draft pick Paige Bueckers lined up next to Fudd and Kaitlyn Chen for Connecticut. Then there’s freshman forward Sarah Strong, whose inside-out game produced 22 points and eight rebounds in the semifinals.

“She can create for herself. She hits clutch baskets,” Johnson said of Fudd. “She has a quick release. I feel like you’ve got to come and face-guard her. You can’t let her get to her spots. You’ve just got to … try to play to her weakness and try to make her two us instead of three us.”

Not only is Fudd reintroducing herself, but she is also building the foundation for the 2025-26 season. She has already announced that she will return to school for her final year of eligibility instead of heading to the WNBA. She probably would have been a first-round selection, but the injuries are still fresh in evaluators’ minds. Even with Bueckers gone, Fudd and Strong have a chance to be one of the best duos in college basketball next year.

But there’s still one thing to finish before looking ahead: getting a little revenge on a certain Brussels sprout.

“Azzi has done a remarkable job of overcoming trials in her life,” Bueckers said. “However that looks like — injury, illness, whatever it is — we know nothing beats Azzi. … Anything life throws at her, she’s going to overcome it and work through it and work her butt off to get over it.”