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Alexa Philippou
UConn Huskies star Azzi Fudd will return next season for final year of college basketball, she announced Tuesday.
Fudd is eligible to leave for the upcoming WNBA draft, where she would have likely been a first-round pick, but told ESPN that she believes spending one more year at UConn will allow her to “work on everything I need to work on” and take her game to an all-new level.
A recent conversation Fudd had with coach Geno Auriemma, she said, helped solidify for her that she had much more left to give in a UConn jersey. Auriemma told her he would support her regardless of her decision but said he thinks she hasn’t reached her full ceiling at UConn.
“He said, ‘I would say 10 games, maybe, you’ve played to your full potential of who Azzi Fudd really is and so you wouldn’t do yourself justice leaving,'” Fudd recalls him saying. “You would leave here not doing what you could in a UConn uniform.’ I was like, ‘yeah, he has a point.'”
“Having someone of Azzi’s ability and the way she can just control a game, she just hasn’t had an opportunity, at this point, to fully show who she is, what she can do, what impact she can have on our program and on college basketball,” Auriemma told ESPN. “So hopefully being here another year, having an injury free year knock-on-wood, can remind everybody this is the Azzi Fudd that was coming out of high school, and can we get a full year out of that? I’m as excited as anybody, our fans, anybody to see what can happen.”
The 5-foot-11 graduate student arrived in Storrs as a heralded prospect, the No. 1 recruit in in the class of 2021 whose jumper NBA legend Stephen Curry once called “more… textbook… than anyone I’ve seen.” But due to injuries, she has played just 72 games over four seasons, including 17 across the previous two campaigns.
Fudd returned four games into the season this year from her Nov. 2023 ACL tear, then missed three games in December after tweaking her knee. But she has made a career-high 30 appearances so far this season, with the Huskies advancing to the Sweet 16 after a win Monday over South Dakota State.
Fudd has come into form in the 2025 calendar year especially, most prominently leading the Huskies with 28 points (including six 3-pointers) to an upset victory at defending champion South Carolina in mid-February. Playing in her first NCAA tournament since 2023, she dropped a NCAA-tournament career-high 27 points in the first round versus Arkansas State and added 17 in their second-round victory over South Dakota State.
Her 45.3% clip from beyond the arc is a top 10-mark in the nation and second among players still active in the NCAA tournament. In the postseason, her 16.4 points per game are the second-best mark on the team.
Fudd said she believes having a true offseason to work on her game – instead of having to go right into another season if she went to the WNBA – would be beneficial, something she wasn’t able to fully take advantage of this past summer.
She wants, too, to tap back into the confidence she had entering her sophomore year, when she had a blistering start of the season before being sidelined with a knee injury. The Huskies will need even more of that version of Fudd with star Paige Bueckers no longer in Storrs.
“Paige is going to be gone, so I can’t rely on her to speak and do all that [leadership] stuff, on and off the court,” Fudd said. “I will have to be in that position.”
At times in her career, Fudd admits, she has been too passive on the court. But with time winding down to achieve her individual and team goals, she knows she can’t take that approach moving forward. Even this year, she’s had conversations with Auriemma where she’s asked him to not go easy on her and to push her harder.
“There’s no more, ”oh, next year,” Fudd said. “Next year is the year, well this year first, but next year, I want to get all these things done, and I want to make sure that him and all the other coaches, even my teammates, are on my back, making sure that I’m being held accountable for everything.”
Fudd said she hopes to be an All-American and win a national championship next season, but she and the team have plenty they still want to accomplish this year. There’s plenty of motivation over the next few weeks, the last ride for Bueckers and senior Aubrey Griffin, as the Huskies hope to take advantage of their healthiest and deepest squad in years come tournament time.
“I don’t want to take any second, any possession, for granted,” Fudd said. “I don’t want to have that kind of passive mindset, not once this tournament. I’m playing for my teammates. I’m playing for me who couldn’t play last year, and [UConn’s current injured players].
“I know what it feels like to be on the outside, so I don’t want to take even a possession for granted or lightly at all but especially now during the tournament.”
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