11 national championships.
That is how many titles the University of Connecticut’s women’s basketball team have won.
The most in the sport, all won by head coach Geno Auriemma.
They won all 11 titles over a 22-year span, but are currently on a nine-year drought.
Auriemma and Uconn last won the national championship in 2016.
Since then, they’ve been extremely close, but haven’t quite been able to get back to the top of the mountain.
Paige Bueckers has been looking to fix that.
The Huskies’ superstar point guard has been trying to do everything in her power over the last four and half years to bring a title back to Storrs.
Bueckers won Big East Player of the Year, AP Player of the Year and Naismith College Player of the Year as a true freshman in 2021, before being upset by Arizona in the Final Four.
She underwent ankle surgery to repair cartilage damage before the start of her sophomore year, but then tore her meniscus and suffered a tibial plateau fracture that caused her to miss 19 games.
She made it back for the last half of the season, and got the Huskies to the national championship, but fell to South Carolina.
Bueckers then tore her ACL which took her entire junior year away from her.
She returned for her senior year and came up short in the Sweet Sixteen.
It was Connecticut’s first time not advancing to the Final Four since 2007.
The two-time unanimous All-American could have left after that and declared for the WNBA draft, shook Auriemma’s hand good-bye and been well on her way.
Instead, she chose to return for a fifth year, in pursuit of a national championship.
She knows now that it’s not easy.
“You see UConn win national championship after national championship, and they make it look super easy,” Bueckers told GQ in an exclusive interview..
“I’ve learned since I came here, it’s actually extremely hard.”
Bueckers is a competitor.
She wants to bring banner number twelve back to Connecticut.
She wouldn’t have came back if she didn’t believe she could do it.
Her head coach loves his star player’s confidence and fire.
“There’s a delusional side of Paige that I love,” Auriemma told GQ..
“She has to know better, but she comes across as, ‘I have never missed a shot; if I do miss, it’s because something happened. I have never fouled anybody in my life; the refs are always wrong.’
“So there’s always this back-and-forth between me and her, because I know what kids want.
“They want to do it their way, they want it to be a little easier. The only problem is, that’s not what they need.
“They need the struggle of it.
“They need to see what it feels like to make sacrifices, to give up yourself, and have the failures that strengthen you and make you ready for those next steps in your life.
“That failure part I think is so important.”
Bueckers has felt the failure, the sacrifice and shortcomings.
She’s had enough.
The fifth-ranked Huskies are 26-3 overall and starting to peak at the right time.
Come March, it’s championship or bust for Bueckers.