Paige Bueckers refused NIL deals in March to 'strictly focus on basketball' during UConn's NCAA tournament run
- Paige Bueckers put a pause on all of her Name, Image, and Likeness deals for the month of March.
- The UConn superstar said she wanted to "strictly focus on basketball" during the NCAA tournament.
The UConn Huskies are a win away from the Final Four.
And their superstar is all-in on hanging a banner back in Storrs — even if it comes at a cost.
Paige Bueckers is one of the highest-earning college athletes in the country and one of the biggest beneficiaries of loosened Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) regulations in the NCAA. Between filing a trademark for "Paige Buckets," cashing in on her vast social media following, and inking lucrative deals with Gatorade, Cash App, and StockX, the reigning National Player of the Year makes a pretty penny as just a sophomore in college.
But all of those business opportunities rank behind her on-court responsibilities. And in the month of March — while she's focused on bringing the Huskies their first national title since 2016 — they aren't on her agenda at all.
"I've sort of canceled out this whole NIL stuff during the month of March," Bueckers said Sunday. "I told my agency, I told the people in my circle, I just want to strictly focus on basketball this month."
"It's what I wanted to do all year, but on off days we'd get some stuff done," she added.
Bueckers' agent, Wasserman's Lindsay Kagawa Colas, confirmed to Insider that the star always stressed the need to prioritize "basketball and school" ahead of sponsorship opportunities. Any deals Bueckers inked also "needed to be about impact and lift across the entire ecosystem of womens basketball," Colas noted.
"Each of her partners wholeheartedly supported that commitment by executing content captures prior to March and focusing activations on lifting via organizations Paige identified," she told Insider. "Specifically, that means that anything you see now was pre-banked, ready to share in a way that takes advantage of the spotlight the tournament provides while allowing Paige the freedom to be fully present for her team and focused on performance."
So far, Bueckers' approach of putting "basketball first and everything behind that... second" has worked. UConn cruised to a 45-point victory against the Mercer Bears in the opening round of the tournament, then advanced to the second weekend with a hard-fought victory over the chippy No. 7 UCF Knights.
The Sweet 16 brought the second-seeded Huskies a highly-anticipated matchup with the No. 3 Indiana Hoosiers, a game in which Bueckers and senior guard Christyn Williams each contributed a team-high 15 points in UConn's 17-point victory. Now, the Minnesota native Bueckers and her Huskies are gearing up for a battle against the top-seeded NC State Wolfpack with a trip back home to Minneapolis on the line.
"They're solid. They're experienced. They know how to win. They play great together," UConn head coach Geno Auriemma said of the Wolfpack. "They don't seem fazed by anything. They had 9 million reasons to lose that game [against Notre Dame in the Sweet 16], and they ended up winning it."
"It just goes to show you their resolve and their ability to just play and play the whole 40 minutes," he added.
Auriemma's whole team will need to play its best basketball to get past NC State and advance to its 14th-consecutive Final Four. But having his star point guard firing on all cylinders is, perhaps, most crucial of all — and Bueckers has done everything she can to be ready.
"Ever since the end of the Big East tournament, I've just tried to lock in mentally and physically," Bueckers said after the first round of the NCAA tournament. "[I'm] trying to do whatever I have to do, cut certain stuff out, and just really lock in this next month."
"The preparation has helped me be better on the court," she added.
The Wolfpack and Huskies will tip off at 7 p.m. ET Monday with a Final Four matchup against the reigning champion Stanford Cardinal on the line. Fans can watch it all unfold on ESPN.