ARLINGTON, Texas — (AP) — Paige Bueckers' hometown in Minnesota took on her name for a day as a tribute to her WNBA debut.
The team from her home state wasn't quite as accommodating.
Bueckers scored the first points of the season for the Dallas Wings and finished with 10, while fellow UConn alum Napheesa Collier finished with 34 points for Minnesota in the Lynx's 99-84 victory Friday night.
All important details, yes. But maybe the biggest is that the first one is out of the way for the No. 1 overall pick in this year's draft.
“The first one’s always the hardest, usually,” Bueckers said. “Not to say that it won’t get harder, but just being able to have a starting point and continuing to build off that. And then there’s no more questions about what is it going to be like for your first WNBA game. Now you have move on past that.”
KK Arnold, one of the Bueckers' teammates when UConn won the national championship in April, was in the announced sellout at the 7,000-seat arena on the campus of Texas-Arlington.
But Bueckers got to share the court with Collier, and they had a friendly moment at the free throw line following a timeout after Bueckers fouled her trying to play post-up defense.
“Just a good ol’ UConn friendly chat,” was all Bueckers cared to share.
Bueckers has plenty of friends back home.
The first regular-season pro game for the three-time Associated Press All-American was noted in her hometown of Hopkins, Minnesota, with a temporary renaming of the city and a local brewery's offering of "Paige's 3-Point Pale" ale. Streets were to be called "Bueckers Boulevard."
“That’s crazy,” Bueckers said in an on-court interview about 90 minutes before tip off.
First-year Wings coach Chris Koclanes believes Bueckers was built to handle the hype.
“She’s been fantastic. She’s special in how she’s able to handle things with such grace,” Koclanes said. “As a team, like really preaching, lots of attention to evolving our mental game and just dealing with everything else, all the outside expectations, the outside noise, and really trying to expose them and give them all sorts of different ways to stay present.
“Credit to Paige, she individually comes in with an incredible amount of personal attention on that and already lives that way,” Koclanes said. “It matched up well with our style and what we’re trying to create with the type of person she is already.”
The Wings reserved the honor of the final pre-game introduction for All-Star guard Arike Ogunbowale, who led Dallas 16 points. Bueckers was second-to-last, and got the loudest ovation.
The cheers from the crowd — including star Philadelphia 76ers guard and Dallas native Tyrese Maxey — were louder when Bueckers rebounded her own miss and scored for a 2-0 lead in the opening minute.
“Should have made the first one,” Bueckers said after finishing 3 of 10 from the field and missing both her 3-point attempts. She had a team-high seven rebounds and two assists, one on a 3-pointer from DiJonai Carrington that put Dallas up 51-50 in the third quarter.
It wasn't long before the Lynx took control, which made sense considering Minnesota was coming off a trip to the WNBA Finals (with a loss to the New York Liberty) and Dallas just overhauled its roster after missing the playoffs.
Then there's the difference in experience between Collier and Bueckers. Collier is a four-time All-Star who has reached the playoffs five times in six seasons. Bueckers would be thrilled to follow Caitlin Clark as WNBA Rookie of the Year.
“It was fun. It was competitive,” Buecker said of her debut. “They’re a really good team, a championship-level team. Now we have a building block to continue to build off of. We liked a lot of things, and we disliked some things. So to continue to build on things we liked and clean up the things that we didn’t. Look forward to that.”
Just like she looked forward to getting the first one out of the way.
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