Will Paige Bueckers immediately as WNBA rookie?
Paige Bueckers sealed his career with Uconn as a champion and now is confident to the WNBA draft. Will it shine immediately in the league?
Last year, Caitlin Clarkescort del Indiana Feverit went from being the first choice of the draft of the WNBA to be among the top five in the vote to the most valuable player (MVP) and to be part of the first All-Wnba team. After leading to Uconn to its first national championship since 2016, Can you Paige Bueckers have a similar impact as the alleged first choice of the draft Monday?
Clark experienced something his partner No. 1, Diana Tauurasihe called “reality”, especially during a brutal season. With the beginning of the Faver calendar loaded with matches before some of the best teams in the WNBA, including three clashes against the Connecticut Sun and three against the New York Liberty In the first 13 games, Clark scored 37% in field shots and had almost as many ball losses as assists, while Indiana started with a 3-10 balance.
However, by when Clark returned from the WNBA Olympic recess, he was one of the most valuable players in the league in the final stretch. During that period, he averaged 23.1 points per game and 8.9 assists per game, while the FAver reached the playoffs for the first time since 2016.
Let’s analyze the performance of Bueckers in UCONN together with Clark in Iowa and other university stars to have a better idea of what they can expect Dallas Wings If they effectively make it the selection No. 1 on Monday.
Selective and efficient scorer
Compared to Clark, a cream scorer, Bueckers is a bit more reserved in that aspect. He reached a maximum of 21.9 points per game in his penultimate year, before falling to 19.9 in his last year with the arrival of the rookie Sarah Strong And the return of Azzi Fudd to alignment. Its highest use rate in UCONN was 29%; Clark had 36.5% or more during the four years of his university career.
However, when the Huskies needed it, Bueckers demonstrated their ability to increase their score, especially during the NCAA tournament of 2025. After having exceeded 32 points only once in their career (against Arkansas At the beginning of its second year), Bueckers exceeded that two -time consecutive brand in a victory in the second round over South Dakota Statewhich was also his last game in Storrs, as well as in the victory of UCONN in the Sweet 16 over Oklahoma.
That last game demonstrated Bueckers’s capacity to score from the three levels. He sported 6 of 12 shots in two -point jump, mainly in suspension, with the Sooners keeping his post -up post -lock players and then scored six triples, matching his best personal brand, in eight attempts.
Although Bueckers could not always maintain the efficiency of that game – when he only needed 27 shooting attempts and three free throws to score 40 points – doing more with less was a constant throughout his career. Bueckers registered a real shooting percentage (TS%) from .628, which measures the necessary percentage of attempts exclusively 2 points to match the total number of points scored, including triples and free throws, and never fell from .600.
Among the escorts selected with the first team of the Draft in the last two decades, only the senior season of Kelsey Plum in Washington (.657 TS%) has been more efficient than the best bueckers seasons. Before that, let’s return to the UCONN champion team of 2001-02, when both Taurasi and Sue Bird They were more efficient than Bueckers as part of a titular quintet full of stars that included Swin Cashmember of the Naísth Fame Hall, to the All-Star Asjha Jones Already the veteran holder of the WNBA Tamika Williams-Jeter.
How Diana Tauurasi, Sylvia Fowles and Sue Bird have re -written the WNBA record books
Playing in such a complete team, Bird leaned a little more towards the pass than Bueckers, averaging 14.4 points per game and 5.9 assists per game, and won the award for the best national player of the year in its last year with a rate of use of 21%. Even so, she could be the best historical comparison for Bueckers as a scorer.
Bird never averaged more than 14.7 points per game in the WNBA, but similarly seized the games with their annotations when it was necessary, more remarkably with 14 points in the last quarter of the victory of game 5 of the 5 Seattle Storm About Tauuras and the Phoenix Mercury on the way to the 2018 WNBA championship.
“It is almost Guaranteed that Paige Bueckers Will Be the No. 1 Overall Pick.”@Andray_carter and @chiney Break Down Why Paige Is Expecta To Be The First Off The Board In The Wnba Draft 📈 pic.twitter.com/fln53ytfry
– ESPNW (@ESPNW) April 8, 2025
Dangerous Pick-And-Roll Operator
Bueckers may have more offensive potential as a WNBA player than he demonstrated in UCONN. After all, Bueckers was not used as frequently as a pick-And-volly handle as Clark. According to Synergy Sports’s records, Bueckers averaged only 6.4 Pick-And-Rolls per game in its last year, which resulted in a shot, a trip to the free throw line or a ball loss, either for it or for its initial pass.
Compare with Clark, who executed 9.3 of these pick-And -rols per game in his last year in Iowa, and then was wrapped in those situations more frequently in the WNBA. According to the Second Spectrum camera monitoring, which includes all the Pick-And-Rolls regardless of the result, Clark’s 30th per game last season led the WNBA.
As we still don’t know how Dallas’s attack will direct the coach Chris Koclaneswho debuts as the main coach, we can guide ourselves for the history of the executive vice president and general manager of the Wings, Curt Miller. Before joining the coaching staff of USC In 2023, Koclanes spent five seasons as an assistant coach under the direction of Miller in the Connecticut Sun and Los Angeles Sparks. As the main coach of the Sparks last season, Miller requested the second largest amount of blockages per game in the WNBA, according to Second Spectrum.
When the UCONN coach, Genoiemma Genoput Bueckers in pick-And-volus situations this season, the results were extraordinary. The huskies averaged 1.2 points per play, the best average of any player with at least 100 valid pick-and-wheels, and had a 62% effectiveness in field shots (counting the triples as 1.5 field shots to reflect their added value). That is the highest average for any player with that pick-And-volume volume from Maite Cazorlafrom Oregon, in the 2018-19 season.
Because Bueckers is a serious scoring threat, WNBA teams are often forced to assign two defenders in the Pick-And-Roll, which creates opportunities to find unmarked companions and distribute the ball. That is one of the great evolutions we saw in Clark during his rookie season. It went from 6.0 assists per game in the first 13 games to 9.7 in the rest of the calendar. Only Courtney Vanderslootwith 10.0 assists per game in 2020, he has averaged more.
Versatile defender
When I compared Bueckers with Clark upon reaching the end of 2024, the defense was his point in favor. In a UCONN team full of injuries that used to have only a starting player (Aaliyah Edwardsselected in the first round of the 2024) Draft of 1.83 meters (6 feet) or more, Bueckers, 1.80 meters (5 11 -inch feet), stood out as an unlikely defender in the paint, leading the team in caps per game.
With the arrival of Strong and the recovery of the rookie Jana el Alfy (1.93 meters), Bueckers returned to a more traditional defensive role in the perimeter. However, its combination of robberies and blockages was impressive. He registered a personal record of 3.5 robberies per 100 rival moves and blocked 3% of his attempts two points from his rivals.
The list of top-five selections of my database that have reached these two thresholds is full of stars: cash, jones, tauurasi, Alana Beard, Angel McCoughtry, Maya Moore, Candace Parker, Devereaux Peters and Gabby Williams. (By the way, the alera of LSU, Aneeesah Morrowit will also be classified if it is selected in the top five of this year).
Given its low stature and what will probably be a great offensive burden, I doubt that Bueckers stands out in defense as some of the players of that group. Even so, it is another sample of how its ability to read plays and size to be the shipowner makes it valuable. Playing what could be a smaller perimeter trio with Arike Ogunbowale (1.73 meters, 5 feet 8 inches) and the blocker Dijonai Carrington (1.80 meters, 5 11 -inch feet) With the wings, Bueckers could descend to mark some wings when Carrington defends the ball.
Expectations as rookie
Bird and Clark share the distinction of being the only WNBA rookies extending directly from the university in averaging 10 points and 5 assists per game in their first season, a group that Bueckers should aspire to join. Only 11 players, including Ogunbowale, reached those brands last season. If we add to this the efficiency and defensive contributions of Bueckers, this would be placed immediately in the upper half of the WNBA shipowners.
Like Clark, Bueckers could take his team back to the playoffs as a rookie. Dallas has two seasons since he achieved a record of 22-18 in 2023, and although the wings have lost two key members of that team, the wing Natasha Howard and Satou Saballythey have incorporated Carrington and winges Myisha Hines-Allen and NALSSA Smith.
Bueckers itself could be the greatest improvement, considering the little production that Dallas obtained from the armor base Jacy Sheldon and Sevgi Uzunwho have already left. Both combined to average 9.8 points and 5.5 assists per party, a production that in Bueckers theory could match, significantly improving 28% of them in triples.
It is not realistic that Bueckers achieved the impressive statistics per game that Clark achieved as a rookie, when he ended up among the 10 best scorers of the WNBA and led the league in assists. It is possible that Bueckers never reaches those heights, and the trajectory of Bird, a member of the Naismith Hall of Fame, shows that it is yet possible to be one of the best players in the League. There are precedents of what we can expect, but Bueckers will forge your own path as a professional.
