As 2025 comes to a close, UConn women’s basketball fans have a lot to celebrate.
While there’s an obvious headliner now sitting in the Huskies’ ever-growing trophy case in Storrs, it was challenging to pick just five moments that best encapsulated a remarkable year for the most decorated program in the history of college basketball. The team will end 2025 ranked No. 1 in the country in the midst of its first 13-0 start to a season since 2017-18, and it has lost a single game in the last calendar year. It brought home a fifth consecutive Big East tournament championship in March, going undefeated in conference play for a second straight season.
Advertisement
Paige Bueckers had a historic rookie season in the WNBA after ending her college career as the Wade Trophy winner and a three-time unanimous first team All-American. Sarah Strong became the program’s first freshman All-American since Bueckers and was named the WBCA’s Freshman of the Year. Coach Geno Auriemma extended his record for most wins by any coach across men’s or women’s basketball.
Amid all of the accolades and titles, here are the five best UConn women’s basketball moments of 2025:
1. UConn wins 12th NCAA championship
There was no question what would land at No. 1 on this list. On April 6, UConn ended its nine-year national championship drought in storybook fashion with an 82-59 win over South Carolina in Tampa, Florida to bring home the 12th in program history. The Huskies took out three consecutive 1-seeds on their dominant run to the title, averaging a 32.8-point margin of victory across their six tournament games. The team’s combined point differential of plus-57 across the Final Four and championship game was the second largest ever behind only the 206 UConn team that won its fourth consecutive title.
Advertisement
Star guard Azzi Fudd got the perfect ending to her comeback season from a 2023 ACL tear when she was crowned the Most Outstanding Player of the championship. She dropped 24 points on 52.9% shooting in the title game and had 19 against UCLA in the Final Four. Strong set a record for most points scored by a freshman in the NCAA Tournament, putting up 24 in the championship plus 15 rebounds, five assists, three blocks and two steals.
It was also a fairytale conclusion to Bueckers’ UConn career, cementing her legacy as one of the program’s all-time greats. After losing most of her sophomore season to a knee injury and her entire junior year to an ACL tear, the fifth-year senior led the Huskies back to the mountaintop with 17 points, six rebounds and three assists against the Gamecocks. Her emotional embrace with Auriemma as she exited the court remains one of the lasting images of the title run.
2. Paige Bueckers drops 40 in Sweet 16
The Huskies got a scare en route to their national title in the Sweet 16 when they entered halftime trailing 36-32 against 3-seed Oklahoma. Bueckers had just 11 points, and Strong was struggling against the Sooners’ star center Raegan Beers.
Advertisement
Then Bueckers came out of the locker room with a palpable refusal to lose and put together one of the greatest solo performances in UConn history to lead the Huskies to an 82-59 victory. The superstar guard finished with 40 points on a career-high six 3-pointers, also adding six rebounds, three steals and two blocks. Bueckers logged 19 points in the fourth quarter alone, and she outscored Oklahoma by herself in the second half 29-23.
Bueckers joined Maya Moore, Katie Lou Samuelson and Nykesha Sales as the only UConn players to score 40 points in a game, and she was the first to do so in the NCAA Tournament. She also moved to No. 4 on the Huskies’ all-time scoring list surpassing future Hall of Famer Tina Charles before eventually moving to No. 3 over Napheesa Collier during the national title game.
3. UConn ends South Carolina’s 71-game home win streak
When UConn arrived in Columbia on Feb. 16 to face then-No. 4 South Carolina, few believed the Huskies had a chance to win. The Gamecocks entered the matchup on 71 consecutive victories at their home arena, and they had also won four straight meetings with UConn, while the Huskies were just a week removed from suffering a stunning upset by Tennessee in Knoxville.
Advertisement
But in the nationally-televised matchup with ESPN’s College GameDay on site, UConn dominated South Carolina wire-to-wire to snap the home winning streak with an 87-58 victory. Fudd led the team with 28 points shooting 50% from the field and 6-for-10 on 3-pointers, while Strong added 16 points and 13 rebounds, and Bueckers logged her own double-double with 12 points and 10 assists. The Huskies held the Gamecocks to their second-lowest scoring performance of the year, and they were the only team all season to put up more than 80 points against the then-reigning national champions.
4. Three Huskies selected in 2025 WNBA Draft
The 2025 WNBA Draft began on a high note for UConn when Bueckers was taken No. 1 overall by the Dallas Wings, but the celebration continued for the Huskies when the team’s other two graduating seniors were both selected in the third round. Kaitlyn Chen went No. 30 to the Golden State Valkyries, joining the first-ever draft class for the new expansion franchise, and Aubrey Griffin was picked No. 37 by the Minnesota Lynx. It marked the seventh time in program history that three or more players were chosen in the same draft.
Bueckers became the sixth No. 1 pick selected out of UConn and the first since Breanna Stewart in 2016. She went on to become the Huskies’ seventh Rookie of the Year winner and earned second-team All-WNBA honors. Though Griffin didn’t play this WNBA season to recover from a lingering knee injury, Chen averaged more than 10 minutes per game making 24 game appearances off the bench with the Valkyries.
Advertisement
5. Aubrey Griffin and Caroline Ducharme return to the court
For several years before 2024-25, the Huskies’ run of brutal injury luck seemed never-ending. But it felt like the program had finally made it through the adversity when Griffin and Caroline Ducharme made long-awaited returns to the court late in the season.
Griffin had multiple major injuries throughout her UConn career, first a back issue that sidelined her for all of 2021-22, then an ACL tear that ended her 2023-24 season after 14 games. Griffin made her first appearance in more than a year against Seton Hall on Jan. 11 and played in 16 games for the Huskies. The sixth-year senior scored in double digits three times and saw the court in every game of the NCAA Tournament except for the Sweet 16 win over Oklahoma.
Ducharme missed all but two games in 2023-24 due to lingering head and neck injuries, and there was a time when it was uncertain whether she would ever play for the Huskies again. On Feb. 22, Ducharme checked into a game for the first time in 461 days during UConn’s 86-47 win at Butler. She went on to appear in nine games, including the national championship.
‘This isn’t the end of my story’: How UConn’s Caroline Ducharme made it back on the court
