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 aware of the “devastation” that comes from that have, made positive 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 Immediately. “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—they usually weren’t all the time rivals: Whereas many of us might bear in mind the showdown between the 2 powerhouses throughout 2024’s Closing 4, Bueckers and Caitlin Clark have been truly teammates for a short time just a few years in the past. They each performed for Group USA within the 2019 FIBA U19 World Cup—and gained gold. In actual fact, Bueckers was even named MVP of the event, partially resulting from her function serving to her crew win within the extra time last.
“Since I’ve identified her, since she was in center college, she’s all the time labored that very same manner, she’s all the time had that fireplace, she’s all the time been an awesome chief, and I actually truthfully couldn’t be happier for her and the 12 months she’s had,” Clark instructed SNY going into 2024’s Closing 4.
4. Bueckers makes use of her platform for advocacy.
After profitable the ESPY for finest girls’s school athlete in 2021, Bueckers used her acceptance speech as a possibility to advocate for Black athletes. “As a white lady who leads a Black-led sport,” she mentioned on stage, “I wish 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 images 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 generate profits from their identify, picture, and likeness (NIL) in 2021. In response to Sports activities Illustrated, she utilized to trademark the time period Paige Buckets to promote merch tagged together with her apt nickname (specifically “shirts, pants, jackets, footwear, hats and caps, athletic uniforms,” based on the trademark software). It seems to be just like the trademark has since been deserted, however now that UConn is again within the Closing 4 for a document 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 she or he 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 Unmatched. 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 strategy to caring for her hair and pores and skin, holding her routine brief 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 wish to be certain it’s as wholesome as doable,” she beforehand instructed SELF.
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