The desert air in Phoenix, Arizona hums a bit louder throughout NCAA Girls’s Last 4 weekend. There’s warmth, hype, and a complete lot of school basketball. And proper within the heart of all of it is Paige Bueckers, who’s spent the previous couple of years as some of the recognizable faces within the sport. Final yr the previous College of Connecticut standout debuted in her WNBA rookie season on the Dallas Wings. Now on the opposite facet of the NCAA, she’s bringing her confidence and pro-level insights to her former teammates.
This yr’s event, although, didn’t finish the way in which many anticipated. UConn’s upset loss in opposition to South Carolina on Friday ended the staff’s profitable streak—one recreation wanting the championship recreation.
“Each single one in all them has a vivid future forward of them and I do know they’ll use that to make them higher,” Bueckers tells SELF. “I’ve been there. I’ve misplaced. I got here up quick, and we simply be taught, develop and hold shifting.”
Loss and disappointment is simply a part of the sport, Bueckers explains. And for a staff that ended their season with an distinctive 54-game profitable streak and 38-1 file, Bueckers has little doubt this can solely make her former teammates stronger.
“It makes you hungry for positive,” she says. “It makes you additional pushed, additional motivated. And generally adversity is the perfect trainer.”
SELF caught up with Bueckers through the Last 4 frenzy to speak concerning the event, life past basketball, and her WNBA season forward.
SELF: Now that you simply’ve accomplished your rookie season within the WNBA, how has your strategy to preparation—bodily and mentally—advanced out of your school days?
Paige Bueckers: I feel positively by damage, and to take nothing in life without any consideration. Each single day you get up it’s a blessing. And it’s essential to not have a way of entitlement. It’s an incredible honor to get up and stay out your dream enjoying basketball as your occupation. So all of that, and simply caring for my physique and being tremendous disciplined in my habits for who I wish to be each single day.
Final yr, it was powerful as a result of I needed to take care of not having a profitable profitable season, and being part of a rebuild. It does not occur in a single day. I’ve realized to not be result-driven, and nonetheless be constant and disciplined in who I’m whatever the outcomes. I simply have an unconditional pleasure and gratitude to indicate up with the identical mentality and the identical perspective whether or not we have now a profitable season or a shedding season.