Paige Bueckers Finally Breaks Silence on UConn Huskies’ Criticized Start to 2023–24 NCAA Season

The injury-marred Huskies are finding it hard to maintain their momentum in the ongoing NCAA season. Their star Paige Bueckers is acting as their defiant spokesperson addressing her teammates’ injury woes and her team’s disappointing defeats. As someone who returned from a season-ending injury this year, Bueckers is backing her girls when the going is apparently getting tough for them.

UConn’s streak of being ranked in the top 15 for 357 consecutive weeks, second only to Tennessee’s 428 appearances, came to an end with their fall to 17th in the AP poll. This comes after UConn trailed behind top-ranked LSU in the opening stretch of the season. It was certainly unexpected to see the most successful women’s basketball program in history in direct competition with the reigning national champions. The raging flak has now prompted their star player to break her silence.

Paige Bueckers talks about the rough patch

The Huskies have four players on injured reserve since this summer. Their guard Azzi Fudd suffered a season-ending ACL injury just after the club welcomed back 2021 player of the year Paige Bueckers, who had missed the most of the previous two years due to serious knee problems.

Paige Bueckers, in a recent interview, addressed the current rough patch of UConn, saying, “At this point, I think we’re all just trying to figure it out. I don’t think it’s a Paige kind of thing. We’re trying to be UConn basketball. There is a lot of stuff to work on and we try to work together as team.”

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Connecticut stumbled to a 4-3 start in the absence of those important players. A program that hadn’t dropped three games this early in the season since 1980 would find little solace in the fact that all of those losses were against ranked opponents who are currently all in the top five.

Will the Huskies go out of the AP poll?

In the recent rankings for women’s college basketball published by the Associated Press, three familiar names made it to the top 10: South Carolina at No. 1, Texas at No. 5, and Stanford at No. 9. Surprisingly, Connecticut found themselves in a lower position, ranking 17th.

This is a significant drop for the Huskies, as the last time they were ranked this low was during the time when Bill Clinton approved the Nafta agreement, Princess Di stepped away from the spotlight, and Schindler’s List was sweeping the Oscars. Huskies may soon find themselves completely eliminated from the AP poll.

Coach Geno Auriemma told beat reporters last week, “I think they were all expecting that this year was going to be different, that this year all that was going away and that was all behind us. And the reaction has been, I believe, rather striking to the stomach.”

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With 11 national titles, six of which came from undefeated seasons, the Huskies have set an unimaginably high bar in the thirty years. They used to win 111 games in a row. They battle for the biggest prizes, have the best players, and are featured in the most-watched games. Their dominance in women’s basketball is unmatched in American sports history. Perhaps, as their fandom hope, their history should come in their memory and boost their game.