Paige Bueckers selected No. 1 in WNBA draft by Wings, becoming UConn's sixth top pick all-time

Emily Adams, Hartford Courant on Apr 14, 2025

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NEW YORK, N.Y. — Eight days after leading UConn women’s basketball to the its 12th NCAA Championship, superstar Paige Bueckers officially became a pro when she was selected No. 1 in the 2025 WNBA draft by the Dallas Wings on Monday night.

Bueckers is the the sixth former Husky chosen with the top overall pick and the first since Breanna Stewart went No. 1 to the Seattle Storm in 2016. She is one of six players ever to win an NCAA Championship in their final collegiate season before going first overall in the draft. Four others — Sue Bird in 2002, Diana Taurasi in 2004, Tina Charles in 2010 and Stewart — also won titles for UConn before heading to the WNBA, while Tennessee legend Candace Parker accomplished the feat in 2008.

Bueckers joins a long legacy of former Huskies in the league, becoming the program’s 28th first-round pick and 48th WNBA draftee all-time, both of which are records. Tennessee is the only other school in the country that has sent more than 40 players to league via the draft, and no other team has sent more than 31. Entering the 2025 WNBA season, every team has at least one UConn alum on its training camp roster.

Bueckers enters her first WNBA season after a stellar fifth year at UConn where she averaged 19.9 points, 4.6 assists, 4.4 rebounds and 2.1 steals to earn unanimous first-team All-American honors. Bueckers also won the WBCA’s Wade Trophy and the Nancy Lieberman Award given to the nation’s top collegiate point guard. The 6-foot guard led the country in assist-to-turnover ratio for most of the 2024-25 season, and she was the only Division I guard to average more than 18 points per game while shooting better than 53% from the field. She came just a few free throws shy of a 50/40/90 season, finishing shooting 53.4% from the field, 41.9% on 3-pointers and 88.9% at the charity stripe.

In Dallas, Bueckers will become one of the faces of a franchise that underwent a major rebuild this offseason. The Wings cleaned house after going 9-31 in 2024, hiring USC assistant Chris Koclanes as head coach and former Los Angeles Sparks coach Curt Miller as general manager. The team brought in six veteran contributors via a combination of trades and free agency, headlined by 2024 Most Improved Player DiJonai Carrington and former lottery pick NaLyssa Smith. Dallas lost All-WNBA forward Satou Sabally to the Phoenix Mercury in free agency, but it retained four-time All-Star guard Arike Ogunbowale to lead the team alongside Bueckers. The Wings also bring back former Villanova standout Maddy Siegrist after she missed most of last season with a broken finger.

Dallas has a complicated history with first-round draft picks: Their last No. 1 pick, Texas forward Charli Collier in 2021, was waived after just two seasons. Eight of the Wings’ 12 first-round selections since 2020 are no longer with the franchise.

Bueckers will make her WNBA debut in the Wings’ preseason matchup with the Las Vegas Aces at Notre Dame on May 2, and her first official game will be May 16 against the Minnesota Lynx at College Park Center in Arlington, Texas.

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