Azzi Fudd Snubs Paige Bueckers in UConn Mt. Rushmore Pick
There are nearly too many great UConn Huskies women's basketball players to count at this point.
Geno Auriemma has coached at UConn for 41 seasons. As of November 2024, when he broke the record for the most wins by a coach in NCAA basketball history (1,217 at the time), Auriemma had coached 160 Huskies players. 45 of those went on to play in the WNBA (the number is closer to 50 now), and of those 45, at least 10 could be considered among the greatest WNBA players to grace the court.
The most recent Huskies standout-turned WNBA superstar is Paige Bueckers, who spent five seasons playing under Auriemma and concluded her college career by winning the 2025 NCAA National Championship. Bueckers went on to be selected No. 1 overall by the Dallas Wings in the 2025 WNBA Draft and won the 2025 WNBA Rookie of the Year Award.
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Bueckers' closest teammate during that time was Azzi Fudd, who appears to be the next UConn player who is destined for a successful career, and would even go No. 1 overall to the Wings in the 2026 WNBA Draft.
Azzi Fudd’s UConn Mt. Rushmore Response Leaves Out Paige Bueckers
Because there have been so many great women's players to wear a UConn Huskies jersey, it's nearly impossible to boil down the list to four.
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However, that's what ESPN commentator Ari Chambers asked Fudd and other UConn players to do, which was then reposted on the @espnw Instagram page.
When it was Fudd's turn to declare her UConn women's basketball Mt. Rushmore, she said, "Oh gosh... There's no wrong answer ever."
Fudd is known for being indecisive, so it shouldn't come as a surprise that it took her a while to craft her responses. But when she did conjure up an answer, it was, "Sue [Bird], Tina Charles, then I'd go [Breanna Stewart] and [Napheesa Collier]."
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For what it's worth, of the five players asked, only one of them (guard Ashlynn Shade, who played several seasons with Bueckers) selected Paige in their Mt. Rushmore, so Fudd wasn't alone.
But many fans would still have expected that Bueckers would make Fudd's final list, but the other options clearly proved too appealing.
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Grant Young covers Women’s Basketball, the New York Yankees, and the New York Mets for Sports Illustrated’s ‘On SI’ sites. He holds an MFA degree in creative writing from the University of San Francisco (USF), where he also graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in Marketing and played on USF’s Division I baseball team for five years. However, he now prefers Angel Reese to Angels in the Outfield.
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