“Love you always & forever”: UConn’s Paige Bueckers sends heartwarming birthday wish to “bestie” Caroline Ducharme via IG
Caroline Ducharme celebrated her 22nd birthday on Saturday and Paige Bueckers took to her Instagram story to celebrate her teammate.
Posting a series of collages of the two together, Bueckers wrote:
"Happiest birthday to my bestie."
"Thank you for always being the best & being there whenever and however."
"Love you always & forever."
Caroline Ducharme was one of the four players sidelined last season during UConn's run to the Final Four. The guard has been recovering this past year and is set to return to court this season.
UConn coach Geno Auriemma spoke about the likely return timeline for his players.
“None of them will be ready,” he said. “If I had to guess, I think Azzi would probably be back sooner than anybody else. Carol, I don’t know — that’s guesswork.”
“She’s trying to do as much as she can and then we try to see how it feels. But for her, it’s all kind of guesswork still. We’re see where that takes us.”
In the last three years of her stay at UConn, Caroline Ducharme has only played in 58 games. She averaged 8.4 points, 3.5 rebounds and 1.2 assists while shooting 43.1% from the floor, including 30.5% from the 3-point range.
Paige Bueckers gains a winning start to her final college season
Paige Bueckers played the first game of her last college season on Thursday against Boston University. The guard finished with 13 points, four rebounds, seven assists and five steals.
Meanwhile, freshman players Sarah Strong and Jana El Alfy each scored 17 points, with Strong adding three assists and six steals and El Alfy taking 11 rebounds.
Huskies coach Geno Auriemma spoke on the important role that Paige Bueckers played in Thursday's 86-32 win.
"You have to look at it as one big picture," Auriemma said. "If you have Paige on the floor, everybody gets better immediately. Then, if you don't have her on the floor, that doesn't mean they're not able to. They just don't have someone setting it up for them.
"So, that's going to take somebody to do that. Some players just need people to set them up. So, we need to find somebody, I think. Obviously, Paige does that for everybody and Sarah does that quite a bit."
Paige Bueckers has huge expectations of leading the Huskies to a championship this season, and the opener showed that UConn has all the right pieces for that journey. Up next, they will host South Florida on Sunday.
Also read: “Pookie day”: Paige Bueckers shares warm birthday wishes for teammate Aubrey Griffin via IG