UConn guard Paige Bueckers plays in the first half of UConn’s on Wednesday against Dayton in Hartford, Conn. Jessica Hill/Associated Press
HARTFORD, Conn. — Paige Bueckers was simply grateful.
Grateful, she said, to be on the court playing with her UConn women’s basketball teammates. Grateful to be healthy again. Grateful, even, to have UConn Coach Geno Auriemma yelling at her in the first half of the 102-58 victory over Dayton in the season opener for the Huskies.
“I’m still learning how to give myself grace,” said Bueckers, who scored eight points and had seven rebounds and four assists. “I’m not ignorant enough to think that it’s going to be a linear trajectory this whole time … this is a process coming back from a major injury, getting my legs under me, getting my rhythm and flow back again.”
But even as she said that, she acknowledged that it was hard to be patient and let the game come back to her after being off for a year because of an ACL tear.
“Even just to have a bad game – I’m grateful to have a bad game and be able to play basketball again and know I’m super grateful that I have a chance to try again on Sunday (against N.C. State) and be even better on Sunday,” she said. “It’s going to be a process coming back from this.”
So she had a bad game Wednesday?
“In my opinion, it was a bad game for me but I’m grateful to have a bad game right now,” she said.
Bueckers played 20 minutes; she didn’t play in the fourth quarter. She shot 3 for 9 from the floor, missing her last two shots at the end of the third quarter before she sat.
Auriemma can sense her frustration and how she’s trying to control it.
“She’s so anxious to play; she wants to be out there and she wants to do everything, be everywhere,” he said. “I think that there’s a certain amount of leadership we need from her, and she’s far ahead of herself and she wants to get it all back on each possession. She’s like, ‘I want to get the whole year back on each possession.’ In the first half, she was trying so hard.”
But Bueckers doesn’t need to be the kind of player she was two years ago when she won every major player of the year award and led the Huskies to the national championship game. She has a different cast of characters surrounding her now; this team has many different weapons. Aaliyah Edwards led the Huskies Wednesday with 23 points on 10-for-12 shooting and had a night Auriemma said he hoped was “somewhat of an average game for her going forward.”
“The beauty of this team is that we can have seven different players be leading scorer,” Bueckers said. “We have a lot of different weapons.”
Even though he was yelling at Bueckers in the first half – “She says she likes when I yell at her so I want to keep her happy,” Auriemma said – he was pleased with how she played.
“The game doesn’t all of a sudden leave you, but it doesn’t come back that fast either,” Auriemma said. “Given it was the first game, I thought it was what she would be and she’ll be better on Sunday (against N.C. State) and she’ll be better next Thursday (against Maryland).”
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