When Connecticut’s Paige Bueckers and Stanford’s Haley Jones fought for a rebound within the fourth quarter on Friday evening, Bueckers ended up limping off the courtroom. Bueckers returned a couple of minutes later, solely to be knocked down once more when Stanford’s Lexie Hull lunged for a rebound.

The collisions weren’t out of character for these two extremely bodily groups, particularly given {that a} shot at a nationwide championship sport was on the road.

Nevertheless it has been simply two and a half months since Bueckers had surgical procedure to restore an anterior tibial plateau fracture and a lateral meniscus tear on her left knee. The 20-year-old guard returned to the courtroom in late February and has slowly elevated her taking part in time, from 13 minutes a month in the past to 45 minutes on Monday evening. On Friday, she performed 34 minutes towards Stanford and led her workforce with 14 factors, 4 rebounds and 5 assists.

Bueckers shrugged off any questions on harm or nerves after the sport. “Yeah, I’m OK,” she stated.

On Sunday, she’ll face South Carolina and the highest defensive workforce within the nation, together with 6-foot-5 Aliyah Boston, the 2022 ladies’s nationwide participant of the yr award and defensive participant of the yr.

Bueckers is on a protracted record of Huskies who’ve missed time this season due to harm or sickness. However they’ve come again from their worst common season since 2004-5 to take down two No. 1 seeds within the event — North Carolina State and Stanford — and are actually hoping to do it once more to win their first nationwide championship since 2016.

Getting again up has turn into a standard thread amongst Bueckers and her teammates. After her first fall of the sport on Friday, Bueckers winced, grabbed her proper leg and limped off the courtroom. After her second, throughout a tussle for a leap ball by which she landed on her unhealthy knee, Bueckers lined her face along with her arms briefly earlier than her teammates came to visit to assist her up. Buckers walked it off and resumed play.

“Some issues, like what occurred final evening, are extra of an in-the-moment kind of ache and you may simply shake it off,” Bueckers stated Saturday. “I used to be simply stretching and ensuring I might get again within the sport as quickly as doable.”

“As quickly as I come off the ground, I can’t wait to get again in,” she added.

Earlier than Sunday’s sport, Bueckers stated she plans to sit down in an ice bathtub, stretch and use “all of the restoration units that we will to make it possible for our our bodies and minds will likely be ready.”

UConn’s coach, Geno Auriemma, stated he’ll play Bueckers for so long as she’s ready, and that he wasn’t “serious about managing her time” on the courtroom on Sunday however reasonably “managing her efficiency.”

“So long as she’s getting the issues completed that we want completed, I’m going to depart her on the market. If she’s struggling just a little bit with no matter, bodily or her sport, then I’m going to take her out,” Auriemma added. “She’s going to have her arms full tomorrow. We’re taking part in in all probability one of the best protection in America.”

South Carolina’s Brea Beal, who blanketed Stanford’s offense on Friday and blocked its prime scorer from breaking double digits, is anticipating Bueckers to be on the prime of her sport, harm or not.

“Relating to somebody like Paige, it doesn’t matter what she’s going to go on the market and I believe the adrenaline goes to defend her from that,” Beal stated on Saturday. “I positively suppose we’re going to get one of the best sport she’s performed all season for positive.”