Napheesa Collier is getting ready for the 3×3 league she co-founded with Breanna Stewart which is set to tip off on January 17th, 2025. Promoting Unrivaled with her husband Alex Bazzell, who also serves as the President of the upstart league, Collier is dropping hints about what fans can expect in the new 3×3 format. And while 34 WNBA players will participate in the debut season, there’s also an exciting college hoops player in Paige Bueckers.

Make no mistake, the UConn star will not appear in Jan 2025 as she’ll be too busy playing for the Huskies and perhaps winning her first NCAA championship. But she also signed a deal with former Huskies star Collier’s new league and might play in 2026 if she chooses to enter the W in 2025. And while we might get a chance to see this pairing of players under Geno Auriemma’s tutelage together on the court, might we see a similarity in their game, as Seerat Sohi of The Ringer WNBA Show points out in the latest episode?

“I see a lot of similarity between you guys, like just in terms of the stamina, the ability to play on and off the ball,” the analyst tells Collier. “You both are two-way players, you both play a lot bigger than your size and see the floor really well. Make impact in these nuanced ways.”

Then Sohi asks the Minnesota Lynx player if she agrees, and Phee answers, “I’ve never looked it up before because she’s a point guard and I never thought to compare us both. I don’t think if there’s anyone I would compare Paige to because she’s a new player. Like, we have new players coming to the league that we’ve never seen before and I think Paige is one of them.”

Largely expected to be the No. 1 pick in the 2025 WNBA Draft, Bueckers’ college resume speaks for itself. Despite injuries that took her out for the 2022-23 season, the Huskies guard has been averaging 22 points, 4.5 rebounds, 4.5 assists, and 2.5 steals so far this season. No wonder Collier is impressed and can’t find a W alternative for her!

“Just as a point guard…she’s so talented. She’s so unselfish in the way she plays and so I don’t know if I could compare her to anyone that’s playing in today’s game,” the Lynx star continued. Phee also revealed how Bueckers, who reached a UConn record set by Collier in her NCAA days, and she has played in the 3×3 format before.

Paige Bueckers has broken a Napheesa Collier record at UConn

Auriemma is famous for churning out some of the best women’s basketball players in the league at UConn and Napheesa Collier has been no exception. The 2024 Defensive Player of the Year, the Lynx came this close to winning the championship this year. But it was Auriemma’s other former mentee, Breanna Stewart, also co-founder of Unrivaled, who took it. But among the current crop at the school, Paige Bueckers is the top sell.

When Seerat Sohi asked Collier about interacting with the red shirt senior, the W star revealed, “I’ve talked to her a couple of times. I played with her on the 3-on-3 team when we went to Qatar several years ago. I was maybe a rookie, so I played with her then. And she’s from Minnesota so I’ve seen her several times, like I’ve talked to her a bunch over the years. I just talked to her at the UConn game so I’ve seen her a lot in the last couple of years.”

The duo had teamed up to represent Team USA at the World Beach Games in Doha in 2019. Collier had been fresh out of college and Bueckers was a 2020 commit. Interestingly just a few days ago, Paige Buckets marked her 49th 20-point game of her UConn career on Monday Napheesa Collier for third-most in Huskies history. And where the W star did it in 150 games, the UConn guard did it in 90!