This angle was apparent earlier within the 2025 event, when USC star JuJu Watkins tore her ACL, ending her season. Bueckers, who’s all too acquainted with the “devastation” that comes from that have, made certain to attach together with her. “I reached out to her providing my help and prayers and letting her know that we’ve exchanged numbers now, so we’re locked in,” Bueckers mentioned, per USA At the moment. “No matter she wants mentally, bodily, to vent, ask questions.”
3. She was as soon as teammates with Caitlin Clark.
Two of the most important names in girls’s basketball—and so they weren’t all the time rivals: Whereas many people might keep in mind the showdown between the 2 powerhouses throughout 2024’s Remaining 4, Bueckers and Caitlin Clark have been truly teammates for a quick time just a few years in the past. They each performed for Staff USA within the 2019 FIBA U19 World Cup—and received gold. In actual fact, Bueckers was even named MVP of the event, partly on account of her function serving to her workforce win within the extra time remaining.
“Since I’ve identified her, since she was in center college, she’s all the time labored that very same method, she’s all the time had that fireplace, she’s all the time been an incredible chief, and I actually actually couldn’t be happier for her and the yr she’s had,” Clark instructed SNY going into 2024’s Remaining 4.
4. Bueckers makes use of her platform for advocacy.
After successful the ESPY for greatest girls’s school athlete in 2021, Bueckers used her acceptance speech as a possibility to advocate for Black athletes. “As a white girl who leads a Black-led sport,” she mentioned on stage, “I need to shed a lightweight on Black girls. They don’t get the media protection they deserve. They’ve given a lot to this sport, the group, and society as a complete, and their worth is simple.”
Bueckers additionally makes use of her social media platforms to attract consideration to racism, police brutality, and social injustice. It’s private for Bueckers, whose youthful brother Drew is Black. She captioned a carousel of pictures of Drew promising, “I’m going to work for change, little brother. I need you to develop up in a world that accepts you for who you might be.”
5. She utilized to trademark the nickname Paige Buckets.
Bueckers will need to have seen a possibility when the NCAA started permitting student-athletes to make cash from their identify, picture, and likeness (NIL) in 2021. Based on Sports activities Illustrated, she utilized to trademark the time period Paige Buckets to promote merch tagged together with her apt nickname (particularly “shirts, pants, jackets, footwear, hats and caps, athletic uniforms,” in response to the trademark utility). It seems to be just like the trademark has since been deserted, however now that UConn is again within the Remaining 4 for a report twenty fourth time, it could be time to revive the plan so Bueckers’s followers can get some severe swag.
6. And he or she already has some fairly candy sponsors and partnerships.
Bueckers has 5.7 million followers throughout Instagram and TikTok mixed, and he or she could also be among the many highest-paid school athletes. In actual fact, she was ranked because the top-earning feminine school athlete of 2024 by NIL Retailer. She’s partnered with a number of noteworthy manufacturers, together with Bose, Uber, Google Chrome, Chegg, Intuit, Dunkin’, CeraVe, and even the brand new girls’s basketball league Unequalled. She’s additionally sponsored by Gatorade and Nike.
7. However her off-the-court routine is fairly chill.
Regardless of her fame, Bueckers takes a laid-back, down-to-earth method to caring for her hair and pores and skin, maintaining her routine quick and candy and choosing drugstore staples moderately than super-luxe merchandise. Her nighttime routine begins with a bathe since all that train drains her hair—to say nothing of the dye (yep, that blond hue isn’t pure, as reported by Attract!) and her typical on-court coiffure (face-framing French braids paired with a ponytail). “Between the braids, the coloring, the sweat, I simply need to ensure that it’s as wholesome as attainable,” she beforehand instructed SELF.
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