On the gym walls of the UConn Huskies Women’s basketball team, banners hang for every All-American and national player of the year. The Huskies have seven players with the prestigious Naismith Award and nine with the AP National Player of the Year award. All won a national title. Maya Moore won two, Diana Taurasi won three and Breanna Stewart won four. Except one.
Try to put yourself into the shoes of that lone player. Surely, you’re feeling the pressure to rise to a certain level, no? So does Paige Bueckers. Those banners continuously remind her of something that has eluded her ever: a national championship. Last year, in the Final Four, UConn lost against Caitlin Clark’s Iowa. With that, the drought between national titles for UConn expanded to 8 years — must have been painful for a program that owns a record 11 championships. Bueckers, in her fourth season, third NCAA Tournament, and third trip to the Final Four, didn’t lift a trophy. The Huskies started once again.
Bueckers came back to the 2024-25 season, her fifth year at UConn and likely be the last in Storrs. She can opt to return for a 6th but she has indicated she’ll enter the WNBA Draft. It comes back to the fact that this is likely her last shot at a national title. Add to that the projected No. 1 overall pick in the WNBA and continuous comparison to Caitlin Clark. If this is not pressure, then what else? Coach Geno Auriemma knows it well.
Rachel Annamarie DeMita took to her YouTube Channel after the Huskies crashed out against the Tennessee Lady Volunteers 80-76 and stated that this two-pronged pressure of a national championship and Caitlin Clark comparison has brought Bueckers down. She said, “It’s been such the perfect storm of media narratives. From what I’m seeing it might have gotten to Paige. The fact is when we went into this season the whole narrative was Paige Bueckers JuJu Watkins, those were the two superstars, those were the ones that you had to watch out for”
“Media was comparing these two players to Caitlin Clark and so every fan’s expectations going in and watching these two players, the expectation for Paige was that Paige Bueckers was the Caitlin Clark before Caitlin Clark. How many media people have you heard say that that was the narrative” DeMita did not stop there. She also indicated how the national championship pressure is killing the star.
“It was oh this is Paige’s final year, she’s going to win a championship this year, like it’s pretty much guaranteed it’s UConn’s year. Paige is going to get a championship before she goes to the WNBA draft and then she’s going to be the number one pick, this has all been mapped out since the beginning of the season,” DeMita said. She even took a dig at the media also for the narrative.
“You’ve compared Paige to Caitlin so much, you have fans thinking that when they watch Paige they’re going to get the same thing as what they saw Caitlin do and I think that’s so unfair to her. Paige is a great player she’s not playing bad but you have her at such a level that now we think Paige Beckers is playing bad when she has 14 points and eight assists in a game where they were double-teaming her and Geno saying well when she gets double teamed she doesn’t want to keep the ball. Who wants to keep the ball when they’re getting double-teamed?” she argued. DeMita felt CC never had the media-built story that Paige has to prove, and it’s getting the worst out of her.
