“Caitlin plays a high-octane style that feels impossible to slow down. Paige is exacting and calculating — takes a scalpel to the game. They both pick you apart but in different ways.”
One glaring difference: Bueckers can and does play excellent defense. Caitlin doesn’t expend her energy on defense.
More frequent Clark matchups for Bueckers are in the future. Now, on this Monday night, the task was reaching the Final Four — and perhaps getting Auriemma his first title since 2016.
UConn guard Paige Bueckers drives for a layup, and two of her game-high 31 points, in the Huskies’ 78-64 victory over USC on Monday to advance to the NCAA women’s basketball Final Four. (Young Kwak/The Associated Press)
Southern Cal, without JuJu, hung tough with its size. Sarah Strong, the UConn freshman who lives up to that last name, was magnificent with 22 points and 17 rebounds. And then Bueckers owned the fourth quarter, finishing with 31 points, and UConn won by exactly 14 — 78-64.
UConn celebrated, but the Huskies ignored the ladder under a basket and didn’t cut down a net. There’s more to get done if this team is going to live up to Auriemma’s prediction from her arrival in Storrs that somewhere down the line the Huskies would be saying of Bueckers:
“We wouldn’t have won the national championship without her.”