UConn’s Paige Bueckers Declares ‘We Lean on God’s Strength’ after Huskies Win Title
The All-American guard who led Connecticut to its first women's basketball championship in nine years on Sunday said she leaned on her faith in God throughout a career marked by injuries and doubts about whether the Huskies could return to glory. Connecticut's Paige Bueckers scored 17 points in her team's 82-59 victory over South Carolina in the NCAA Tournament championship, a dominant win that gave Bueckers her first title and the school's first crown since 2016.
It was the 12th championship for the Huskies, a perennial powerhouse under legendary coach Geno Auriemma.
Bueckers helped guide the Huskies to the Final Four in 2021, 2022 and 2024 but had not won a title until Sunday. She missed the entire 2022-23 season with a knee injury.
Her faith, she said, gave her peace amid the uncertainty.
"If I could say one thing, it would be to stand firm in who you are," she told ESPN in a postgame interview. "There's a lot of people who write you off. There's a lot of narratives that … try to put you in a box. [They] tell you [that] you got to do this, you got to do that, you got to be more like this player, you got to be more like that player. Stand firm in who you are.
"There's people that doubt you because they think you're doing it on your strength alone. We lean on God's strength here, and through God's power for God's purposes -- we're not doing this alone, and we have a village that we lean on and just do it for the people who believe in you and always stick to who you are."
“We lean on God’s strength here.”
Great stuff from Paige Bueckers after helping UConn win the women’s college basketball national title pic.twitter.com/IkiZHklJNy— Sports Spectrum (@Sports_Spectrum) April 6, 2025
Bueckers, who lists Proverbs 3:5-6 on her bio, has often been vocal about her faith. After she suffered a season-ending knee injury while playing a pickup basketball game in August 2022, she wrote on Instagram, "It's hard trying to make sense of it all now, but I can't help but think that God is using me as a testimony as to how much you can overcome with Him by your side."
Her 19.9 career points per game are the highest in Connecticut history. She also has the third most career points in NCAA women's tournament history and was the consensus national player of the year as a freshman in 2021.
On Sunday, she again discussed her faith when asked how she mentally prepares for high-pressure games.
"The way we prepare in the weight room, the way we prepare -- how we eat, how we sleep -- you're just leaning on that," she said. "And I have a faith in God, that I believe everything happens for a reason, and everything is in His hands already. So just leaning on that, leaning on His strength, leaning on His comfort, and leaning on the preparation."
Photo Credit: ©Getty Images/Maddie Meyer/Staff
Michael Foust has covered the intersection of faith and news for 20 years. His stories have appeared in Baptist Press, Christianity Today, The Christian Post, the Leaf-Chronicle, the Toronto Star and the Knoxville News-Sentinel.
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Originally published April 07, 2025.
