All-American guard Paige Bueckers will leave UConn having already made a considerable mark on college basketball’s most decorated program.

Sunday’s national championship game in Tampa, Fla., against defending champion South Carolina is Bueckers’ final opportunity to add her signature to the program’s unprecedented legacy.

UConn (36-3) won the last of its 11 national championships in 2016. The nine years that have elapsed make this the program’s longest title drought since it won its first in 1995.

Bueckers holds assorted Huskies records, two of the most noteworthy being achieved during this NCAA Tournament run. Her 40 points in UConn’s Sweet 16 win over Oklahoma are the most any Husky has ever scored in an NCAA Tournament game. In the next game against Southern California, Bueckers passed Napheesa Collier to become UConn’s third all-time leading scorer.

Having already earned National Player of the Year honors in 2021, with another potentially capping her third unanimous first-team All-American campaign in 2025, Bueckers’ trophy case is stocked with all of the game’s top honors.

That is, except the one most synonymous with UConn basketball.

“We’re not worried about the past,” Bueckers said following the Huskies’ 85-51 rout of UCLA in Friday’s national semifinal. “Every single day you walk into the gym, you’re trying to live up to the standard of playing UConn basketball, but you’re not comparing yourself to other teams or to players before.”

The 2024-25 Huskies are indeed their own team, with differences from past UConn teams – including the 2021-22 squad with Bueckers that saw South Carolina in the national championship game the last time UConn reached the final round.

The Gamecocks (35-3) dominated in that encounter three years ago, holding Bueckers to 14 points in a 64-49 win. The championship was South Carolina’s second under coach Dawn Staley, and a defeat of the Huskies on Sunday would give the Gamecocks three championships in four seasons.

South Carolina can also become the first repeat champion since that 2016 UConn team capped a run of four straight championships.

When asked Saturday about Bueckers’ impact on the growth of women’s basketball, Staley said she was going to “tread lightly with this.”

After heaping effusive praise on Bueckers, Staley noted the coverage of the UConn star overshadowing South Carolina’s own impressive legacy.

“I can’t not address it because it’s happening,” she said. “It happened to us last year. Everything was about (former Iowa star) Caitlin Clark and her legacy and her ability to win a national championship. Yet we were coming into this thing undefeated, doing something that’s unprecedented at the time, because it’s hard. It’s hard. We find ourselves back here in a similar situation.”

Clark, as college basketball’s all-time leading scorer, commanded the spotlight when Iowa faced South Carolina in last season’s championship game. She scored 30 points, but the Gamecocks won 87-75.

Four of South Carolina’s five starters from that game are back, including Te-Hina Paopao. She scored 14 points in the 2024 national championship game, the same total she notched leading the Gamecocks’ 74-57 romp against Texas in Friday’s national semifinal.

–“The Conductor” driving South Carolina to history

Staley credited assembling the corps of South Carolina upperclassmen who have an opportunity to claim their third national championship in four seasons to the efforts of Raven Johnson.

Johnson – the versatile wing who had six rebounds, three assists, two blocked shots and a steal against Texas – was what Staley described as “the conductor in putting that (2021 recruiting) class together.”

“She would ask me who we were recruiting,” Staley said. “She would be the first one to say, ‘Hey, you about to get a birdy.'”

The “birdies” were a collection of signees ranked No. 1 in the 2021 signing class. The group features Johnson along with Sania Feagin and Bree Hall, both key players in South Carolina’s return to the title game.

Feagin delivered a 12-point, eight-rebound performance in the 54-50 Elite Eight win over Duke, while both she and Hall are crucial to the Gamecocks’ 57.4-point-per-game defense.

–Containing UConn’s perimeter scorers

Bueckers’ scoring punch, which produced a three-game run of 31-plus-point performances during this NCAA Tournament, keys UConn’s 81.7-point-per-game offense.

However, the Huskies are still dangerous when Azzi Fudd can pick up the scoring slack. UCLA experienced it in the national semifinal, when Fudd scored 19 first-half points, and South Carolina experienced it in February when Fudd’s 28 points led UConn to an 87-58 win over the Gamecocks.

When asked how South Carolina will adjust its perimeter defensive strategy to address both Bueckers and Fudd, Hall said, “I’m not going to tell you what we’re going to do. That was a trick question.”

–Fudd’s long journey

In the three seasons since Fudd started for UConn in its national championship game loss to South Carolina, the guard has endured a series of lows. Injuries limited her to just 17 combined appearances over the subsequent two seasons.

Fudd has played in 33 games in 2024-25, scored in double figures in four of the Huskies’ five NCAA Tournament games and scored eight critical fourth-quarter points to hold off Southern California in the Elite Eight.

“Azzi has done a remarkable job of overcoming trials in her life,” Bueckers said on Saturday. “However that looks, injury, illness, whatever it is, we know nothing beats Azzi. She has an incredible work ethic, and we think anything in life, anything life throws at her, she’s going to overcome it and work through it and work her butt off to get over it.”

–Field Level Media