Tonight in the Spokane Regional, graduate guard Paige Bueckers added another accolade to her growing and long list of accomplishments scoring 40 points. Bueckers became the fourth player in UConn history (fifth instance) to score 40 points in a game, and the first to do it in the NCAA tournament. Bueckers joins elite company in the Huskies record books with Nykesha Sales scoring 46 points in 1997, Maya Moore (40, 41) in 2009 and 2010, and Katie Lou Samuelson (40) in 2017.
With tonight’s 40 point performance Bueckers passed Maya Moore for the most 25-point games in the NCAA Tournament (7) by a UConn player in the last 25 years. She also surpasses Seimone Augustus (LSU, 2002-2006) and Kaleena Mosqueda-Lewis (UConn, 2011-2015) to become the 10th-highest scorer in March Madness history.
Additionally, Bueckers performance tonight places her 16th on the highest scoring individual performances in March Madness women’s history and 13th on the list if performances taken after 2000 are considered. Bueckers joins Alabama’s senior guard Sarah Ashlee Barker as the only player in the March Madness tournament this year so far to score 40 or more points. Barker scored 45 points making 17 of her 25 field goal attempts, including four 3-pointers in the double overtime loss to Maryland in the second round.
In the 82-59 win tonight against the Oklahoma Sooners, Bueckers led the team at the half with 11 points, making 4 of her 11 field goal attempts, going 1-for-2 from beyond the arc and a perfect 2-for-2 at the foul line. However, the Huskies found themselves down four points to OU at the half. Bueckers explained after the game that the Sooners had the upper hand at the half, “They had a great first half, and we didn’t make a lot of shots, but we dug down defensively, stuck to our defense, and I think that’s what we want to just hang our hat on, is defense winning games.”
As Bueckers said, the Husky defense plus her 29 second half points allowed the team to take a 23-point margin of victory which is the fourth-largest by a team in NCAA tournament history after trailing at the half, and second-largest in the Sweet 16 or later. Bueckers finished the game making 16 of her 27 field goal attempts, converting 6-of-8 three pointers, contributing six rebounds, and three steals.
After the game when asked about her performance and being a part of a program with so many legends, Bueckers expressed, “It is an honor. I’m extremely blessed and extremely grateful that I even get to play at UConn and be in these conversations with, like, the greatest of all time. But people see the points, but like, a large just attribution to Sarah, Jane, Ice, the way they were screening for me, getting me open, getting me looks. Like, everybody sees the points, but nobody seese the screens set, the passes that were found to me. So it’s, I guess, an individual point total, but it’s really a team effort.”
UConn will play USC on Monday, March 31st at 9pm ET on ESPN for a chance to move on to their 24th Final Four.
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