UConn women’s basketball great Paige Bueckers shut down conversation about her relationship with fellow former Huskies star Azzi Fudd during the Dallas Wings media day Monday, calling it, “nobody’s business but our own.”
Fudd and Bueckers, who were teammates at UConn from 2021-25, were reunited as professionals in Dallas when the Wings selected Fudd with the No. 1 overall pick in the 2026 WNBA Draft. Bueckers was Dallas’ No. 1 pick in 2025, making the star guards the first college teammates ever selected to the same team with back-to-back top picks.
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At Fudd’s introductory press conference with the Wings on April 16, she was asked to comment on her off-court connection with Bueckers by a local reporter. Bueckers identified Fudd as her girlfriend in an interview on the orange carpet during WNBA All-Star weekend last July, but neither had publicly addressed the relationship since. A Wings spokesperson stepped in when the question was asked at Fudd’s press conference.
“I understand why you have to ask that question,” the spokesperson said. “We’re going to respectfully decline from commenting on our players’ personal lives.”
UConn star Azzi Fudd ‘couldn’t be happier’ to join Dallas Wings as No. 1 WNBA Draft pick
On Monday, Bueckers opened her media day press conference with a statement and said she would be addressing the subject only once.
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“What we choose to share is completely up to us, but as media members, I understand you guys have a job to do, and you guys have to ask questions about the basketball aspect of it, so that’s what I’ll be addressing today,” Bueckers said. “Me and Azzi have always been the most professional. We’ve always conducted ourselves as such, and we’ve never let anything that happens off the court carry onto the court. That’s what we’ll continue to do.”
Fudd and Bueckers have known each other since 2017 and have a long history of success as teammates. They had a 44-5 record at UConn when both were on the court and led the program to its first national championship in nine years in 2025. They also played together as high schoolers on the USA Basketball junior national team, bringing home gold medals from the 2018 FIBA U17 World Cup and 2017 FIBA Americas U16 Championship.
“I’m not entirely sure if this is new to media members, to social media, to new people who are watching the WNBA or women’s basketball in general, but me and Azzi are not new to this,” Bueckers said. “We’ve been doing this for a long time and have countless reps at it. We have a lot of experience with it, so we’ll continue to use that experience to show up and be professionals, great teammates, great leaders, the hardest workers. We’ll continue to show up and do our job and help the Dallas Wings win basketball games.”
Bueckers also made clear that Dallas’s decision to draft Fudd at No. 1 was unrelated to their relationship. Fudd, who was widely projected as the top pick for months leading up to the draft, had a spectacular redshirt senior season at UConn earning consensus first-team All-American honors and helping lead the Huskies to a 38-1 record and a third straight Final Four appearance. She averaged 17.3 points, 3.1 assists and 2.5 steals per game, all of which were career highs, while shooting 48.1% from the field, 44.7% on 3-pointers and 95.5% at the free throw line.
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“Azzi Fudd was the No. 1 draft pick because she earned it,” Bueckers said. “It had nothing to do with me and everything to do with who she is as a human being, who she is as a basketball player, her resilience, her strength and her career-best year at UConn. Azzi is her own great individual person, and she should be celebrated as such.”
Fudd and Bueckers make their debut as pro teammates Thursday at 7 p.m. when the Wings play their first preseason game in Indianapolis against the Indiana Fever.
