Paige Bueckers completed her illustrious college basketball career in storybook fashion Sunday, helping lead UConn to an 82-59 drubbing of South Carolina in the 2025 NCAA Tournament championship game.
In the process, she made quite a few people 1,300 miles to the west of her school’s campus awfully proud.
Shortly after the Huskies completed their lopsided victory, the Minnesota Vikings’ official account on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, posted a photo from Bueckers’ childhood of her wearing a purple Adrian Peterson No. 28 jersey while holding a Vikings helmet.
Bueckers is a Minnesota native who was born and raised in the Minneapolis area.
The post included the caption “Buckets” — a shortened version of Bueckers’ nickname, “Paige Buckets” — as well as trophy and purple and yellow heart emojis.
Though she opted to play college ball halfway across the country, Bueckers has kept a close bond with her home state. She is one of several standout basketball players to come out of Minnesota over the past several years, a group that also includes Chet Holmgren and Jalen Suggs.
Bueckers was a three-time Gatorade Minnesota Player of the Year at Hopkins High School, which she led to a 30-0 record and an appearance in the Class AAAA state championship game in 2020 before it was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As a senior that season, she averaged 21.0 points, 9.2 assists, 5.2 steals and 5.1 rebounds per game while being named the Gatorade Female Athlete of the Year and the Naismith Prep Player of the Year.
After winning national player of the year honors as a freshman during the 2020-21 season, Bueckers’ college career was plagued by injuries that caused her to miss half of the 2021-22 season and all of the 2022-23 season.
She recovered valiantly, though, leading coach Geno Auriemma’s Huskies to the Final Four last season and the program’s Division I-leading 12th national championship this season. She was a unanimous first-team All-American for the third time in her career this season and was a critical piece in leading UConn to the national title, averaging 27.6 points per game in the Huskies’ final five NCAA Tournament victories.
Bueckers is widely projected to be the No. 1 overall selection in next week’s WNBA draft.
