PORTLAND, Ore. — There were times last year when they were both undergoing treatment to rehabilitate their injured knees when UConn forward Ice Brady can remember Paige Bueckers barely being able to walk.
Bueckers tore her ACL in August 2022 during a summer pickup game that sidelined her for the entirety of the 2022-23 season. This, after missing 19 games the season before with a tibial plateau fracture from a non-contact injury. She couldn’t help the Huskies when their streak of 14 consecutive Final Four appearances came to an end last season. Couldn’t give her head coach any on-court contributions in what became one of the most trying seasons of Geno Auriemma’s career.
So when Brady watched Bueckers drop 32 points, grab 10 rebounds and finish with 6 assists and 4 steals against Syracuse last week in the second round of the NCAA Tournament, she made sure to take it all in.
“After the last game, just watching everything back, I’m just amazed,” she said.
She wasn’t the only one.
“We have the best player in America,” Auriemma famously said last week. “And you know, (I’m) just saying that because the numbers in this world of analytics — the numbers say that she is.”
Welcome back to March, Paige Buckets.
Paige Bueckers is Paige Bueckers.
There is no…
