Dallas Wings select Paige Bueckers with No. 1 overall pick in WNBA Draft

The Dallas Wings selected former UConn star Paige Bueckers with the No. 1 overall pick in the 2025 WNBA Draft. Arguably the best overall player in women’s college basketball is now in the pros.

In 38 games last season, Bueckers averaged 19.9 points per game, 4.4 rebounds per game, 4.6 assists per game, shot 53.4% from the floor and 41.9% from three-point range. She ended her career as a national champion with UConn, finally achieving the ultimate team goal.

Following a two-year period where Paige Bueckers dealt with devastating injuries, she returned to form in 2023-24 and this past season. She even averaged 21.9 points per game in 2023-24.

Her head coach, Geno Auriemma, let his emotions pour out with Bueckers following a title win earlier this month. It was a moment years in the making.

“Some conversations are light and fun and don’t mean anything,” Auriemma said of the moment with Bueckers. “But today was the first one, I think, in five years that all the emotions that have been building inside of me came out. They came out here because in the five years that she’s been at Connecticut I’ve never seen her cry. And she might deny it, but she cried because she’s going to miss me.”

Paige Bueckers was named the 2021 AP Player of the Year, her freshman season at UConn. Of course, there was a lot attention on Caitlin Clark, particularly in the latter part of her career. But Bueckers was a star that shouldn’t have been overlooked and now could add to the WNBA’s rising popularity.

If anything, Bueckers won’t forget her roots. She was fully developed as a player at UConn under Auriemma and will carry it as a pro.

“It’s just gratitude for all that Coach [Auriemma] has meant to me and how much he’s shaped me to the human I am, to the basketball player I am throughout this entire five years,” Bueckers said. “Just putting it all together in one hug, what our journey has been together.”