UConn's trip to Villanova was not a trap game. On the contrary, the new phenomenon of women's university basketball, Paige Bueckerswas preparing to celebrate his 100th in a Huskies jersey by heading towards a big victory. Until everything changed one minute from the end of the third quarter.
With the ball in hand, Paige Bueckers, who was already at 15 points and 9 assists, suddenly lost control of the ball and her left leg found itself trapped under her opponent, Jasmine Bascoe, who had thrown herself to the ground to try to recover the ball, causing a pretty scary twist and the fall of the UConn point guard.
For long seconds, the whole room held its breath, until Paige Bueckers, face grimacing, got up to tell the referees that it was a flagrant foul.
More fear than harm?
The player limped back to the locker room before returning at the end of the match with a large ice pack on her knee, but her face still worried. After the match largely won by her team (83-52), it was her coach Geno Auriemma who gave rather reassuring news, ensuring that her player felt “pretty good” after finding herself in this “strange situation”.
“I think she’ll be fine. She looks good and let's just say I'm optimistic too.”, he addedbefore taking an example from a similar situation with one of his former players, Azzi Fudd, absent for a month following a similar fall. “As was the case with Azzi, it's not as bad as we might have imagined, so it's very good news, especially when you see how bizarre his fall was.”
Among the most followed players on the market and promised first place in the next WNBA Draft thanks to her complete game but also her attacking qualities and her outside threat (42.2% address in university career), Paige Bueckers hopes to finish her experience at UConn as best as possible, knowing that she has already suffered a rupture of a cruciate ligament in the same knee, which caused her a blank season in 2022/23.
