As we head towards the end of what might be her final season in college basketball,Paige Bueckers has written her name in UConn Huskies women’s basketball history.
She’s joined a long list of legendary players who thrived under coach Geno Auriemma, such as Swin Cash, Breanna Stewart, Maya Moore, Sue Bird, and, of course, Diana Taurasi.
Tauris just retired from the WNBA, while Bueckers is on her way to the league. With that in mind, she recalled an epic story about how Taurasi pushed her to be the player she is nowadays.
Diana Taurasi once chose JuJu Watkins over Paige Bueckers
Back in 2022, during the Final Four, someone asked Diana Taurasi to pick a player for her pickup team. Instead of going with Bueckers as most people expected, she took USC star JuJu Watkins.
Phoenix Mercury legend Diana Taurasi
Bueckers confronted Diana Taurasi
It didn’t take long before that clip found its way to Bueckers. She then reached out to her fellow Huskie and confronted Taurasi for not choosing her. The WNBA legend, however, was playing chess, not checkers:
“I saw the video, and I was like, ‘All right, bro, I see what you’re doing. You picked JuJu over me. What’s up with that? You told me you had my back, it was me over everybody,’” Buekcers recalled. ” And she was like, ‘Yeah, dog, I just did that to motivate you. It’s all motivation.'”
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Needless to say, it worked. While Watkins will most likely be the top player in college once Bueckers is gone, Bueckers is now one of the greatest players in program history and is projected to be the first player taken in the 2025 WNBA Draft. That’s why when the veterans talk, we should all listen.
