TAMPA, Fla. — They don’t talk about legacy at UConn. There’s no point. Why acknowledge the obvious? Because at UConn, talking about the importance of national championships isn’t pointing out the elephant in the room; the room is the elephant. It is the standard bearer, whether or not you say it out loud. And anyone who walks through those doors at UConn goes there for that exact reason.

In Storrs, the minimal expectation is excellence, perfection is the goal. There is no shortage of reminders. The gym is bordered in chairs from each of the Huskies’ Final Fours (they’ll soon add their 24th chair, a brightly adorned teal and yellow one from Tampa). When visitors enter the gym, they can choose the chair from the 1995 Minneapolis Final Four or the 2009 St. Louis Final Four or the 2016 Indianapolis version. It’s like the most subtle flex of a musical chairs game for a basketball fan. Higher on the walls hang the banners for All-Americans and national championships. The names that look down on players from those banners aren’t just well-known, they’re some of the most decorated and famous basketball players of all time at any level.

And this is the practice gym.

There’s an intention to that. These relics and honors aren’t saved for Gampel Pavilion, where the Huskies play their home games, or for a museum on campus. Instead, these reminders are housed in the same place where UConn players toil for endless hours during their careers, where they sweat, where they’re screamed at by Geno Auriemma for mistakes.

Somewhere, along the far sideline, Auriemma has etched a rut far into the hardwood from his pacing as he cursed the turnovers and bad passes and every other mistake that has ever stood between the Huskies and their next win.

Because he knows that it was not actually in Minneapolis or St. Louis or Indianapolis where the Huskies won their national championships, even if that’s where they lifted the trophies. It was here, in this practice gym, surrounded by those expectations, where they fixed mistakes and earned those titles.

This is why Paige Bueckers came to UConn. To add her name to that wall with Maya Moore and Diana Taurasi and Breanna Stewart, to bring more national championships to Storrs. As a three-time All-American and 2021 national player of the year, her banners will be added once she leaves campus this spring. She’ll be part of the group that retrieves a chair from Tampa.

But she has not won a national title. She has come close. In her three previous trips to the Final Four, Bueckers has advanced once to the title game. The Huskies lost to South Carolina.

On Sunday, in what will be Bueckers’ final 40 minutes of her college career, she gets a final go at the Gamecocks and one last opportunity to bring home a national championship to UConn.

“Anything less than a national championship is really a disappointment…the pressure is a privilege”

Paige Bueckers with her thoughts on playing for UConn: pic.twitter.com/tzLMEHOfZV

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— UConn on SNY (@SNYUConn) April 3, 2025

But she and Auriemma don’t talk about that. They haven’t since she set foot on campus back in 2020 as the nation’s top recruit and the player who many assumed would be the first to lead the Huskies back to the promised land, considering their national title “drought” that had existed since 2016. Now, nine years since the Huskies’ last title, they’ve essentially been in the Sahara as Auriemma has tinkered with lineups that were never quite deep enough to win a championship, even though they were nearly all still good enough to get within striking distance.

The only time Auriemma brings up Bueckers’ championships (or lack thereof) is from his rut on the sideline in the practice gym, when he’s too fed up with her mistakes and stubborn decisions.

“That’s why you’ve never won a national championship, and you never will!” he’ll scream.

“Every day in practice when she does the dumb things she did as a freshman, that’s the only time I bring it up,” Auriemma said. “As a reminder that each and every day and year, you need to put away the things you did as a freshman and sophomore.”

Auriemma has won 11 national titles, but Bueckers has won none. His next national title?

“I don’t know that it has any impact on my life whatsoever other than it makes me feel that I’m still able to have an impact at my age and for how long I’ve been doing it,” Auriemma said. “But it certainly impacts her life and what she wants and what she’s been dreaming about since she picked up a basketball.”

This fall before the season, Auriemma sat in his office detailing the problems in Bueckers’ game. For him, it’s both therapeutic and productive to go through these because, in his own way, it’s the only way forward.

The best way to get to No. 1 for Bueckers is not to talk about it, but instead, to talk about what’s holding her back and let her work through those issues under the shadows of the banners in their practice gym.

“I think it scares her to leave here and be the best player ever to play UConn without winning a national championship,” Auriemma said from his office this fall, looking out over the practice gym. “That it affects your legacy a little bit. I’ve never said that, and I don’t believe that, but I’ve gotta believe she thinks that. That she needs that to validate who she is. … But I don’t believe that that’s the ultimate identifier of what true success is.”

For Auriemma, Bueckers’ legacy is cemented regardless of what happens Sunday — in how she has shouldered responsibility for her team and its growth, for becoming one of the faces of the sport at a time of constant flux and change, for who she has become and been for her teammates, both on and off the court.

Even as one of the most recognizable basketball players in the country, Bueckers has risen before dawn to make breakfast for her teammate Jana El Alfy during Ramadan. While the Huskies were in Spokane last week for regionals, she celebrated with El Alfy by bringing her an iced vanilla latte and scone on Eid Al-Fitr, as El Alfy broke her month-long fast. Auriemma saw how Bueckers went out of her way this fall to write out a list of five priorities for sophomore Qadence Samuels, who plays less than six minutes a game, to improve. He saw how, after the Big East tournament, Bueckers pulled Ice Brady aside to breathe confidence into her as the Huskies prepared for their postseason run. When Brady’s confidence was low, Bueckers texted her and offered support, and then showed up at Brady’s apartment to make sure she understood how instrumental she was for the team’s success.

In their own ways, even away from the practice gym, these are all the signs that the years of Auriemma’s frustrations and shouts (“That’s why you’ve never won a national championship, and you never will!”) are working. Slowly, even Bueckers — who Auriemma will cite as one of his most stubborn people he has coached (ahem, takes one to know one) — has understood why they don’t talk about championships and legacies.

“Every single day you walk into the gym, you’re trying to live up to the standard of playing UConn basketball, but you’re not comparing yourself to other teams, to players before,” Bueckers said. “We are trying to be the best team, we are in the present on any given night.”

On Friday night, in a vintage UConn performance as the Huskies beat UCLA 85-51 in the Final Four, Bueckers had a quiet night by her recent standards: 16 points, five rebounds, two assists, zero turnovers. After putting up the largest win margin in Final Four history (UConn holds the next top three, too), Auriemma said, “I don’t think we made a mistake the entire evening, especially on the defensive end.”

As Friday night crept into Saturday morning and the Huskies got further from the UCLA win and closer to the South Carolina game, Auriemma reflected on a conversation he had with Svetlana Abrosimova. Her name hangs on the wall as an All-American and her impact on the 2000 national championship — the Huskies’ second — is obvious. Back then, Auriemma used to talk about national championships to his best players every week.

“Finally, she said to me,” Auriemma said, “as only a Russian can, ‘Why do we talk about championships? Everybody knows why we were here. Stop it.’ ”

So, he did. Then they went on to win another 10. On Sunday against South Carolina, the Huskies will have a chance to add one more.

Bueckers will have 40 final minutes to stamp her legacy and lift a trophy in Tampa that, for her, will have ultimately been won over the last five years in a practice gym in Storrs.

(Photos of Paige Bueckers: C. Morgan Engel / NCAA Photos via Getty Images)