MARCH MADNESS WITH PAIGE BUCKETS

With elite skills, killer deals, and an army of fans, UConn star Paige Bueckers and the unprecedented powerembodies the excitementof new-school women's basketball.

- Leah Faye Cooper

IT'S HARD TO stand out on the frenetic streets of SoHo in New York City, but on a frigid afternoon in December, the University of Connecticut women's basketball team bus-navy blue, emblazoned with the school's Siberian husky logo, and taking up four or five parking spaces-is unmissable. Officially, UConn is in town for the inaugural Shark Beauty Women's Champions Classic in Brooklyn. The women have detoured into Manhattan to celebrate the first Nike Player Edition shoe released by a college athlete, the Paige Bueckers G.T. Hustle 3, designed by the Huskies star guard, a.k.a. Paige Buckets.

The baby blue and lavender shoes, with Bueckers's name on the heel, represent a pinnacle of what's possible at the dawn of the lucrative NIL era, which allows student-athletes to profit from their name, image, and likeness. This change in the NCAA rules has dramatically tipped the power dynamics of college sports in favor of athletes over the last several years, not that you would necessarily know it from the intimate launch event. In a Nike loft space, UConn alum and WNBA veteran Sue Bird moderated a short Q&A with Bueckers for a small crowd that included Bueckers's teammates; her mother, Amy; legendary UConn women's basketball coach Geno Auriemma; Bueckers's stylist Brittany Hampton; and a girls' basketball team from the Upper West Side.

Wearing her team warm-ups and her signature hairstyle-parted in the middle and pulled back into a ponytail, with a pair of skinny, face-framing French braids on each side of the part-Bueckers looks like she is coming straight from practice, which she is. "This is surrealI don't even know if it's truly set in yet," Bueckers says while in conversation with Bird. "It means everything, and I'm extremely grateful."