SIX WEEKS LATER, after her own season had been shut down, Bueckers pulls up to the Fudds' home. Like Fudd, Bueckers has been in remote learning for more than a month, and her spring club basketball season seemed more doubtful by the day. She'd heard all about Fudd's piecemeal routine and decided she needed to be there too.
"The way they just find places to work out, even if it's in their house," Bueckers says. "I wanted to be a part of that."
Every morning, Bueckers says, the alarm goes off at 6 or 7. If she and Azzi don't get out of bed, Katie yells down the stairs to get them to move. The first stop of the day is to get shots up at District Sportscenter in Alexandria, Virginia, empty except for them. Then they get breakfast before helping Katie with the camp she runs outside for a group of girls in the neighborhood. Strength and conditioning is in the afternoon, either at a track or in the yard or street, anywhere they could run. Then maybe more shooting on their makeshift court or some more cardio.
"It was almost two- or three-a-days that we did," Bueckers says. "She never gets tired of working out."
Azzi and Paige sometimes play one-on-one. But it's never just one game; always a series. Best of five games from each corner, each wing and the top of the key.
The ball bounces between them. Check. Over and over, move after move. Sweat pours as they grind -- iron sharpening iron. Fudd hasn't played consistently in weeks. Her knee still bothers her. And Bueckers, the top recruit in the 2020 class, is formidable. "She might have won two spots," Bueckers says, "but I always won three. If she told you any different, then she's lying."
"I think if we played now, I'd definitely be more of a competition," Fudd says.
Even after Bueckers moves on from the Fudds' and heads to UConn, Azzi continues the routine. Up early to shoot. Run wherever she can. Ballhandling in her basement. She heads to New York for private sessions with renowned skills trainer Chris Brickley, or to South Carolina to work with Brandon Payne, who trains Curry.
"She is, quite frankly, better than some of the NBA guys I've worked with at understanding what needs to be done day in and day out to create new improvement opportunities for herself," Payne says.
Says Brickley, "At the high school level, I don't think I've ever worked with anyone that could shoot the ball as well as she does."
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