STORRS, Conn. – Paige Bueckers figures she was about 10 years old when she first went to a game at The Barn.
After that, there were too many trips to The Barn to count, Paige usually dressed in a University of Minnesota jersey, always rooting for the hometown Golden Gophers, or the WNBA's Minnesota Lynx, or watching the high school championships.
Sunday, she will make another trip to The Barn, this time dressed in her #5 UConn jersey, as Paige and her Husky teammates invade Williams Arena – known as The Barn to the locals – for an interconference clash between the 3-0 Gophers and the 2-1 and eighth-ranked Huskies (5 p.m., FS1). There's a good chance that a capacity (14,625) crowd will be on hand, no doubt many of them torn between supporting their University of Minnesota women or cheering for the humble UConn superstar from nearby Hopkins.
"Yeah, there's a lot of family and friends coming," Bueckers said after Thursday's 87-53 romp over No. 20 Maryland. "It's super surreal because I grew up going to games at The Barn and watching the Gophers and watching the Lynx play there. So to be playing there, where I grew up, at my dream school (UConn), wearing a UConn uniform in that arena, it's super surreal for me."
Bueckers has been back to Minnesota as a UConn player before, leading the Huskies to the 2022 NCAA Championship game held there.
"When we were at the Final Four, we played at the Target Center, but I think The Barn is an extremely great environment," she said. "I grew up more going there and watching those games. It's a different experience and I'm super excited for it. Minnesota will always be my home, will always be where I'm from, and I have a whole bunch of family and friends there … there'll be a lot of ticket requests."
The game, scheduled some years ago, was originally supposed to be a homecoming game for Paige as a senior – in keeping with UConn's longstanding tradition. But injuries and redshirts and Covid have slowed her UConn career to the point where she is now a redshirt junior eligibility-wise. UConn will play another homecoming game on Dec. 20, traveling to Toronto to meet Toronto Metropolitan for senior Aaliyah Edwards (Kingston, Ontario).
"I'm grateful for UConn doing this for their seniors, giving them a homecoming game," Bueckers said. "And I get to play against my 'little sister,' Amaya Battle – we went to high school together and we're very close. But I'm super excited for the environment and the crowd and the experience. We're only there for about a day and a half, but I'm hoping to enjoy the time there."
Battle, a sophom*ore starting guard for Minnesota, is the Gophers' second-leading scorer (11.3) and tops the team in assists (7.0). She and Bueckers combined to lead Hopkins High to two state championships.
Bueckers heads into her homecoming game coming off her best performance of the young season, – a game-high 24 points on 10-of-15 shooting, 5 rebounds, 6 steals and 2 blocks in the win over Maryland at Gampel Pavilion. Even beyond the impressive stats, however, it was a vintage performance of leadership by the 6-foot guard, who took over the game in the last 5:00 of the first half, leading the Huskies on both ends of the floor to finish the half on a 20-4 run and give them a commanding 42-27 halftime lead.
"Paige did what All-Americans do," Maryland Coach Brenda Frese said afterward. "She put the team on her back and made play after play."
UConn Coach Geno Auriemma is certainly used to Bueckers' on-court heroics by now, but was especially pleased to see how they affected the rest of the Huskies – especially coming off UConn's 92-81 loss at N.C. State, an admitted defensive debacle.
"I don't care how many good players you have, there's still a pecking order on your team," Auriemma said. "I do think that there's players on our team, as there would be on any team, that know what they're good at. But they need somebody to kind of light that fuse and Paige became that today. She became that lightning rod that started the whole thing. We had a lot of young guys that benefitted by the way Paige took over the game."
Bueckers, who was sporting a shiner just under her right eye from sustaining a poke that sent her to the bench before she re-entered the game and ignited the second-quarter run, is aware of what it might take from her to keep these Huskies among the country's elite teams.
"I thought I did a bad job leading last weekend (vs. N.C. State), in terms of the intensity we need to play with," she said. "You would think, as a team the stuff we've gone through the past couple of years, that we would never take a possession for granted and play every game and every play like it's our last, because you never know when the game is going to get taken away from you.
"So that's the mentality that we needed as a team and I don't think I did a good job of voicing that and showing it myself. So I think discipline, and being able to hold myself accountable before I hold these other guys accountable, and making sure I'm doing everything on both sides of the floor – talking, communicating. We say, 'Oh, we need to box out', or 'Oh, we need to rebound,' or 'Oh, we have to stop turning the ball over,' instead of making people specifically accountable. It's making sure we are upholding the standard we have."
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