Is Connecticut star Paige Bueckers the best player in the NCAA tournament?

The short answer, maybe, is Caitlin Clark, Angel Reese, JuJu Watkins. But the long answer is a bit more layered.

“We have the best player in America,” Geno Auriemma, Bueckers’s coach at Connecticut, said last week. “And, you know, just saying that because the numbers, in this world of analytics, the numbers say that she is. And the whole stat sheet says that she is.”

A few days later, Dawn Staley, coach of undefeated South Carolina, said: “I think Paige is probably the elitist basketball player to ever grace our game. You look at her efficiency, she doesn’t take bad shots.”

Now, after beating Duke, 53-45, on Saturday in the Sweet 16, U-Conn. and Bueckers are a win away from the Final Four. They face Watkins and top-seeded USC at Moda Center on Monday. Bueckers, the third-seeded Huskies’ 6-foot guard, played all 40 minutes against the Blue Devils, scoring a game-high 24 points. She nailed back-to-back threes in a 10-point third quarter. She banged around in the paint, playing big for a squad that is down six contributors. But even with U-Conn. in the mix — with her influence so plainly obvious — coaches and teammates are still stumping for Bueckers, as if she’s not getting enough credit from whoever’s credit would satisfy them.

Why? Hard to say, of course, but Bueckers didn’t just have two major left knee injuries in the span of about eight months. She suffered two major knee injuries while women’s college basketball exploded in popularity. First it was a tibial plateau fracture and meniscus tear in December 2021. Then, in August 2022, she tore her ACL, ending her third college season before it began. Three years ago, calling her the best player in the country might have been met with a shrug. She was, after all, the first freshman to win the Naismith, Associated Press and Wooden player of the year awards. But while Bueckers healed, Clark became Caitlin Clark. Reese and Clark met in last year’s national final, sparking weeks-long debates about how to win and lose.

That night, when LSU beat Iowa for the title, while Bueckers was still recovering from the ACL tear, she watched from her apartment in Storrs, Conn. But she almost skipped the game entirely, feeling so frustrated she couldn’t be a part of it.

“I love watching basketball, so that’s why I put it on,” Bueckers said this week in Portland. “But I thought really hard about avoiding it. I wasn’t in the best place. I just wanted to be on the court again.”

“Paige would come to the practice facility every day last year to do her rehab and watch practice or…