Paige Bueckers Extends College Career Another Week

The WNBA will have to wait a few more days.

Paige Bueckers and Connecticut are headed to their second straight Final Four. Bueckers’s Huskies easily dispatched USC on Monday night, winning 78–64 behind their superstar’s 31 points.

It’s a dream scenario for nearly everyone involved. Bueckers has a chance to stamp her legacy as an all-time college great with an elusive national title. ESPN gets at at least one more game with Bueckers and UConn, probably the biggest draws remaining in the tournament after JuJu Watkins tore her ACL in the Sweet 16. And Geno Auriemma gets another crack at ending his curiously long championship drought. His teams have lost in the Final Four six times since winning their last title in 2016.

The only people unhappy might be whichever professional basketball team ends up employing Bueckers. The 23-year-old has a history of serious knee injuries, missing 56 games in all since her college career began in 2020. In her sophomore year, she tore her meniscus; eight months later, she tore her ACL while playing pickup basketball, wiping out her junior season and giving her another year in Storrs. She’s been healthy in the two years since.

That pro team could end up being the Dallas Wings, who hold the No. 1 pick in next month’s WNBA draft. The draft is April 14, just eight days after the national championship game. Bueckers has another year of collegiate eligibility remaining, but she has said all year that she has no interest in returning to college. Last week, she said that she would indeed enter the WNBA draft, but that doesn’t preclude holding out, demanding a trade, or otherwise trying to force her way to wherever she prefers to play.

Whenever UConn’s season ends, Bueckers will have 48 hours to formally declare for the draft. Whichever team drafts her can offer her a four-year contract; if Bueckers doesn’t sign the contract immediately, the team would still hold her exclusive WNBA rights for one year, until the next draft.

UConn will play UCLA on Friday night in Tampa in the national semifinal. That’s where their season ended last year after Aaliyah Edwards was called for a controversial moving screen in the final seconds against Caitlin Clark’s Iowa team.