STORRS — After Azzi Fudd went 1-for-5 from 3-point range in the UConn women’s basketball team’s first-round NCAA Tournament win over Texas- San Antonio, coach Geno Auriemma had a suggestion to get her shot back on track.
“He told me that I needed to cut my nails,” Fudd laughed. “He took my hand the other day and was like, ‘You need to trim them, they’re too long.’ He was like, ‘Do you feel the ball coming off your nail?’ I was like yeah, a little. He was like ‘Yeah, you’re hurting the ball. That’s why you’re not making any shots. File your nails down and be nicer to the ball, and it’ll be nicer to you.’ And I did.”
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By Auriemma’s own admission, the advice was mostly unserious. He knew his star guard was frustrated by Saturday’s showing, so he threw the silly idea at her to distract her from the pressure she was feeling to live up to her own expectations under the bright lights of March Madness.
But the Hall of Fame coach might’ve been on to something. On Monday night, in the final game of her college career at Gampel Pavilion, Fudd had the performance of her life to lead the No. 1 Huskies to a 98-45 rout of Syracuse in the second round of the tournament. The redshirt senior dropped 34 points on eight made 3-pointers, both tying career highs, and she also led the team in assists with five and steals with four. She shot 72.2% from the field and missed just three attempts from beyond the arc.
When Fudd checked out of the game late in the second quarter after sinking her sixth 3-pointer, Auriemma inspected her fingernails on the sideline with a bemused smirk.
“I just wanted to get her mind off of making shots, not making shots, and she looked at me like I was an idiot,” Auriemma said. “I said look, I don’t believe it either, but it’s worth trying right?”
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Fudd’s spectacular night put a storybook ending on her five years calling Gampel Pavilion home, a fitting finale considering most of the star guard’s time at UConn has been anything but a fairytale. Her first four years with the Huskies were plagued by injuries: A foot injury that sidelined her for 11 games her freshman year, a knee injury that kept her out of 22 games in 2022-23, then the devastating ACL tear two games into her junior season. Even in 2024-25, which ended in Fudd earning Most Outstanding Player of UConn’s national championship run, her ACL recovery and a minor knee tweak in December kept her out of six games and made it difficult for her to find a rhythm early on.
Her last game in front of the home crowd in Storrs was a pure celebration of her comeback, of the remarkable season she’s put together in 2025-26. The redshirt senior is averaging career highs in points (17.4), assists (2.9) and steals (2.5) while shooting her most efficient splits ever. She’s on pace to break the program record for single-season made 3-pointers and surpassed Hall of Famer Swin Cash to move to 24th on UConn’s all-time scoring list. Perhaps most importantly, she’s started in every one of the Huskies’ 36 wins.
“I was thinking about it mid-game when she was making all those threes, someone asked me the other day, ‘What would Azzi’s perfect final game be at Gampel?’” junior guard Ashlynn Shade said. “I’m like oh my god, it’s happening right now. This is what we’re witnessing.”
“Literally every time she touched the ball it was gonna go in,” sophomore Kayleigh Heckel added. “I feel like she always has it in her to be able to do that, but I think today was awesome especially with it being her last Gampel game ever. It was a really cool way to go out, and I think she hasn’t even entirely wrapped her head around it.”
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Still, by Fudd’s astronomical standards for herself, even “perfect” wasn’t quite perfect enough.
“I’d give it like, I don’t know, an eight (out of 10)?” Fudd said postgame. “It can always be better. An A-plus, I wouldn’t have missed any of shots. I wouldn’t have let my player score on me at all. I would’ve passed a little bit more, had a few more rebounds.”
Before leaving the court, Fudd jogged over to thank the UConn student section, posing for pictures with the gaggle who lingered to watch until she left the building. When Fudd finally emerged from the crowd, longtime friend and classmate Caroline Ducharme was waiting for her with open arms. Fudd pulled her into an embrace, closing her eyes with a soft smile as Ducharme rubbed her back. The pair walked off the floor shoulder to shoulder, waving to the fans as they disappeared into the tunnel towards the Huskies’ locker room.
Ducharme says she’s in denial about her UConn career coming to close, and the redshirt senior initially walked off the court almost immediately after the game ended before she was called back so she and Fudd could share their final moments at Gampel. It wasn’t until Ducharme reentered the arena that reality finally hit her. Though a tear never fell, the emotion was visible in her eyes as she pulled away from Fudd’s hug.
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“I was kind of like, let me just not. Let me just avoid it. Let me just go,” Ducharme said. “Then when I came back out, I was just (thinking of) all the ups and downs. It’s been some of the hardest times of my life here, but also some of the most rewarding. We just said we love each other and we’re not done, but it was nice to have that moment.”
Like Fudd, Ducharme’s college journey hasn’t been an easy one, and hers hasn’t come with the triumphant comeback Fudd got over the last two years. Ducharme suffered her first head injury at UConn during her freshman season in 2022, then missed 13 games with a concussion her sophomore year. She dealt with neck spasms that sidelined her for all but the first four games of 2023-24, and she wasn’t able to play again until late February 2025.
Though Ducharme has appeared in 22 games this season, the impacts of her injuries still linger. She’s missed six games due to migraines and is often limited in practice depending on how she feels day-to-day. She played five minutes Monday in the fourth quarter of her final Gampel Pavilion game.
But Ducharme shared in the joy of Fudd’s performance after all they’ve endured together. The pair have been best friends since they met at a basketball camp in seventh grade, and they’ve leaned on each other constantly through the adversity of the last five years.
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“Everybody sees her in the limelight, but nobody sees all the hours that she puts in and just how rewarding, how deserving she is to have that moment,” Ducharme said. “We joke, there’s pictures where I’m standing up before (the ball) has even left her hand. I just expect it to go in, so for it to really have gone in pretty much every time she touched it was fitting.”
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