In SELF’s Sleeping With… collection, we ask individuals from completely different profession paths, backgrounds, and phases of life how they make sleep magic occur.

At simply 23 years previous, Paige Bueckers has already cemented herself as a pressure in ladies’s basketball: She’s the quickest participant in UConn historical past to succeed in 2,000 profession factors; she was the primary freshman to nab the Wood Award and Naismith Trophy—and, come subsequent month, she’s broadly projected to be the No. 1 decide within the 2025 WNBA draft.

However up to now, one honor has eluded Bueckers: the NCAA title. The Minnesota native got here to UConn together with her coronary heart set on profitable a nationwide championship, however whereas her Huskies have persistently ranked among the many most formidable groups within the NCAA, they haven’t been in a position to seize that prime spot.

In a way, although, the continued striving has introduced the staff nearer collectively: “Gamers, coaches, assist employees, coaching employees, we’re all very shut,” Bueckers tells SELF in an interview over Zoom in February. “Whenever you’re going by one thing with any individual else, it makes it the place you possibly can lean on one another for power, for steering, by good instances and dangerous instances. They’re at all times there for you.”

Win or lose throughout her closing March Insanity try—the Huskies will tip off for the primary time at this yr’s match on March 22—Bueckers is taking consolation in a single factor proper now: Figuring out what comes subsequent. “It’s like a weight lifted off your shoulders,” she says.

5 years after she joined the Huskies in 2020, she says the “plan” is to maneuver on, regardless that she technically has one season of eligibility left (on account of an ACL tear that sidelined her for the whole thing of the 2022-2023 season). At roughly this time final yr, there was far more uncertainty together with her path: Bueckers was broadly anticipated to make ’23-’24 her final season, then despatched shock waves by the basketball world when she revealed at a senior-night ceremony in February 2024 that she had determined to remain at UConn one other yr, as ESPN reported.

“A part of me wanting to remain was me lacking a season and a half on account of accidents, so desirous to make up for that, get a season again,” Bueckers says. Now, nevertheless, she’s prepared to show the web page. “I’ve been right here for 5 years. It’s been a very long time, longer than the conventional four-year faculty profession, and so I felt just like the time was proper,” she explains. “I’ve had an incredible time right here at UConn, an incredible journey. It’s grown me a lot as an individual, as a participant. I’ve loved the relationships, experiences, the bonds. However sooner or later, the journey has to return to an finish, and the subsequent chapter awaits.”

Whereas Bueckers will miss her teammates and the broader Huskies household, she says she can be desirous to proceed studying and rising within the WNBA among the many likes of Caitlin Clark, Angel Reese, Sabrina Ionescu, A’ja Wilson, Breanna Stewart, and different stars. “As a little bit child, I went to Minnesota Lynx video games, dreaming to be of their sneakers, dreaming to be within the WNBA. I’m positively not there but, however God keen, that’s the place I wish to be,” she says. “Having that chance to play in a league that I dreamt of being in, [along] with gamers that I look as much as, it makes you actually excited for the longer term.”