In 2013 AAU coach Gary Knox posted a photo of a smiling girl, hands clutching her backpack straps, orange headband perfectly coordinated with her orange T-shirt. “Remember the name,” he wrote on X. “Paige Bueckers. 6th grade, think Diana Taurasi. Best 6th grade G I’ve ever seen.”
Knox wasn’t wrong. Bueckers arrived on the women’s college basketball scene in 2020 as the year’s top recruit, when she – like Taurasi years before her – joined the University of Connecticut and immediately made an impact. Everyone wanted a piece of Bueckers, although she was just happy to finally have arrived at the school, even with the Covid-19 pandemic raging.
