Photo: Paige Bueckers Appears on 'GQ Hype' Cover, Talks UConn, NIL, More

Paige Bueckers admits she had a slight misconception about the ease of winning a title when she first signed with UConn.

"You see UConn win national championship after national championship, and they make it look super easy," she said to GQ's Leah Faye Cooper. "I’ve learned since I came here, it’s actually extremely hard."

Bueckers graced the cover of GQ Hype, the magazine's weekly digital edition, and gave a wide-ranging interview.

Among those topics was how the 2021 national player of the year has benefited directly from the dawn of the NIL era, which can carry a downside.

"It's definitely crazy," she said. "You become an adult before you’re actually an adult. I have a financial adviser, thank goodness, because taxes, that's insane to me—I can't believe I'm actually a part of that world now."

Bueckers, who's into her fifth year with the Huskies, was also blunt about her priorities at this point in her academic career.

"I'm going to be honest: I'm tapped out of school," she said. "I graduated, got my degree, did well—so I asked my academic adviser, Ellen, to give me the easiest route possible."

UConn doesn't occupy quite the same place within women's basketball it once did. The Huskies' last national championship was in 2016, and that feels like an eternity for a program that has 11 titles under head coach Geno Auriemma.

Still, Bueckers grew up in a time when a succession of legends were walking through the door at Gampel Pavilion and hoisting trophies.

She told Cooper that playing for the Huskies was her "dream."

"UConn was winning everything," Bueckers said.

Beyond watching UConn's success, the Minnesota native was watching former Huskies star Maya Moore guide the Minnesota Lynx win four WNBA titles over a seven-year span.

Auriemma knew early on he wanted Bueckers to anchor his 2020 recruiting class, too. One consequence was that UConn didn't make much of an effort to land Caitlin Clark. Having Bueckers and Clark share the same backcourt is fascinating what-if.

Auriemma told Cooper he watched Bueckers when she was a freshman in high school and thought she was "really talented, gifted."

"Watching her, you could see that she and her teammates had a connection, and a lot of times the best player on the team doesn’t necessarily have a great connection with the rest of their players," he said.

Bueckers has lived up to the hype with the Huskies. She was the best player in the country as a true freshman, and she picked right up where she left off when a torn ACL cost her the entire 2022-23 season.

Still, there's one glaring absence on her career résumé.

Bueckers said to The Ringer's Mirin Fader in October that becoming a national champion is her overriding goal. Auriemma, for his part, believes she may come to feel she's "the best player to ever play at Connecticut that didn't win a national championship" if that doesn't come to fruition.

UConn is 26-3 and fifth in the Associated Press Top 25 poll. Without a clear favorite standing head and shoulders above the pack, the Huskies will undoubtedly be a contender when the NCAA tournament gets underway.