Paige Bueckers has unfinished business, leads UConn into Final Four

She is the star of the show and she has been for four of the last five seasons

Paige Becker's has once again led Yukon into the glare of the Final Four's bright lights

She will also likely be the number one pick in the WMBA draft in two weeks time

So what makes her tick? How has she been so successful as a leader and what's left to accomplish

Monday night in the Elite 8 win over USC, she scored 31 points and took over the game

when the Trojans made a third quarter run. In the last three games of the tournament, she's scored 31, 40, and 34 points

After Monday's win, she was asked how she knows when to give a team exactly what it needs

Of course, she turned it all around and gave credit to her teammates. Having a great team that has so much confidence in you, a coaching staff that has so much confidence in you and just builds you up so you feel confident in these moments

But none of it would happen without the team and everything that goes into a performance

So just trying to read what the game is calling for, read what we need at that moment, at that time, whether it's passing, rebounding, scoring, just trying to do whatever it takes a win

Her career numbers speak for themselves, a balanced game that fills up every stat category

She missed a 2022 season with an ACL injury in her left knee but she been to the final four every other season though she still looking for that elusive national title Gino Oriama who coached over a dozen Yukon all greats had high praise in his own way

I trust Paige to do the right thing ever since her freshman year

I trust her to always do the right thing. After she's tried all that she wants to do, then she'll finally do the right thing

Ariema continued saying Beckers is the most positive player he's ever coached and one of the most unique

gave an example right there at the podium. She always takes the absolute highest view of what can

happen. And no matter what anybody points out to her, no matter, like when she was sitting up here

I pointed to her four turnovers. I said, what was that? And she immediately went to the next column

and she said, look, I got it back though. I got four steals. Like, that's, her mentality is always

this is what I did to help us win. I'm not worried about what the other stuff was. And

and I've admired that in her forever. Becker's is trying to keep her young teammates in the moment

especially during tournament time when opponents can take advantage of anything that might be a distraction

Yukon is the betting favorite to win the title at most sports books, but in the first game of the Final Four, Friday

they'll face a UCLA team that has lost just twice all season

They'll need another focused page performance to make it to Sunday's title game

For Straight Arrow News, I'm Chris Francis