Faith, science and Pilates fuel Paige Bueckers’ UConn return

STORRS, Conn. — UConn‘s guards are just getting started. It’s an early September morning, weeks before the 2023-24 women’s college basketball season opens. Loosening up just after 8 a.m., the squeaking of the players’ sneakers on the practice court at Werth Champions Center intensifies.

But something is missing. Someone.

Paige Bueckers is across the hall, alone in a quiet training room. Wearing a gray t-shirt and turquoise shorts with a bun collecting her blonde hair, she kicks off her white slides and sits on a yoga mat. Her eyes are fixated on her laptop, where a virtual Pilates session with her instructor is about to start.

Bueckers moves through her weekly session, progressing through stomach and sidekick series, plank work and one-leg standing exercises. Bueckers couldn’t do much of this when she first began practicing Pilates a year ago. She now has familiarity with the movements and follows along with ease but still checks the laptop frequently to ensure her form is correct.

Signs of fatigue set in — “fish again?!” Bueckers exclaims when asked to do another round of side sit ups, her breathing heavier in the subsequent reps. Even with the increasing difficulty, she never bows out before time is up.

“Pilates is the hardest form of workout that I do,” Bueckers told ESPN. “Harder than lifting, harder than rehab, harder than on-court, harder than cardio.”

The old Paige Bueckers would never have believed she’d be doing Pilates four or five times a week, and looking forward to it. That was before her August 2022 ACL tear, her second major left knee injury in eight months.

But as Bueckers makes her long-anticipated return Wednesday in the No. 2-ranked Huskies’ season opener against Dayton, she isn’t the same player who last suited up for UConn 584 days ago. She has overhauled her approach to the game and, in many ways, her life.

“I don’t believe her mindset has ever been ‘I want to be as good as I was,'” said UConn assistant Morgan Valley, Bueckers’ position coach who played alongside Huskies greats Sue Bird and Diana Taurasi. “Since she started this process, it’s ‘I’m going to be better than I was.'”

Those in her orbit say she has succeeded: “Paige is a better basketball player now than she was when she was national player of the year,” UConn coach Geno Auriemma said in late October.

That’s an eyebrow-raising proposition. Deemed generational before she’d even suited up for her first college game three years ago, Bueckers became the first freshman to win the Naismith, AP and Wooden player of the year awards. Her transcendent play prompted comparisons to Taurasi, and it seemed only a matter of time before she’d propel UConn to its first national championship since 2016.

But Bueckers’ last 23 months have…