COLUMBIA, S.C. — Back in 2019, in Azzi Fudd’s living room in Virginia, Paige Bueckers took the floor with a captive audience. She had a pitch to make. On the Fudd family TV screen, she pulled up a PowerPoint complete with a video that Bueckers had created — high school highlights of Bueckers passing the ball seamlessly meshed into clips of Fudd knocking down shots for her high school team.
Bueckers, who had already committed to UConn, was putting the full-court recruiting press hard on her best friend, and her messaging wasn’t subtle: Come to Storrs, and this is what we can do, this is what we can be for the next few years.
That’s not how it has worked out.
Injuries, almost ironically suffered in a way that seemed to be the basketball gods keeping the two from playing together, meant that in three and a half years since Fudd arrived on campus before the 2021-22 season, the duo had played only 35 games together entering Sunday’s matchup at South Carolina.
In that time, with Bueckers and Fudd alternating their time on the floor with the Huskies, other behemoths have dominated the space, including South Carolina. That’s why Sunday’s game between No. 7 UConn and No. 4 South Carolina mattered even more. For Bueckers and Fudd, together at last, it was a chance — and…
