UConn’s Paige Bueckers Wins 2021 Naismith Women folk’s Participant of the Year

After turning into the greatest star in girls’s college basketball as a freshman, Connecticut’s Paige Bueckers became as soon as named the 2021 Naismith Women folk’s Participant of the Year.

The Atlanta Tipoff Membership announced Saturday that Bueckers beat out Kentucky’s Rhyne Howard, Louisville’s Dana Evans and South Carolina’s Aliyah Boston. The 19-year-used became as soon as the first freshman to fetch the ladies’s award in its 39-year historical past, and he or she joined Kevin Durant, Anthony Davis and Zion Williamson because the splendid first-year players to narrate the honor.

Bueckers became as soon as the seventh participant in UConn girls’s basketball historical past to fetch the award. She joined Rebecca Lobo, Sue Bird, Diana Taurasi, Maya Moore, Tina Charles and Breanna Stewart.

Coming out of Hopkins Excessive College in Minnesota, Bueckers became as soon as basically the most-hyped participant in the 2020 recruiting class and became as soon as ranked as basically among the finest total recruit by ESPN.com.

Bueckers set apart up 17 factors, nine rebounds, 5 assists and 5 steals in her first college game and averaged 20.0 factors on 52.4 p.c taking pictures, 5.8 assists, 4.9 rebounds and a pair of.3 steals.

Bueckers helped UConn fetch the Big East celebrated-season and tournament titles and invent a No. 1 seed in the NCAA girls’s tournament sooner than it bowed out to Arizona in the Closing Four. She became as soon as named Big East and Linked Press Participant of the Year.