{"id":242728,"date":"2026-05-25T00:56:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-25T00:56:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/242728\/"},"modified":"2026-05-25T00:56:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-25T00:56:08","slug":"uconn-great-azzi-fudd-has-her-wnba-breakout-performance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/242728\/","title":{"rendered":"UConn great Azzi Fudd has her WNBA breakout performance"},"content":{"rendered":"

It took six games for Azzi Fudd <\/a>to show the WNBA why the Dallas Wings made her the No. 1 pick in the draft.<\/p>\n

The former UConn women’s basketball<\/a> star scored 24 points \u2014 punctuated by 17 in the third quarter \u2014 to lead the Wings to 91-76 victory over the New York Liberty Sunday in Brooklyn.<\/p>\n

Coming off the bench, Fudd’s previous season-high was 12. She was 4-of-11 from 3-point range before Sunday, but she hit 6 of 12 against the Liberty. Five of those 3’s came in the third quarter.<\/p>\n

Not to be outdone, teammate and fellow UConn alum Paige Bueckers<\/a> also had 24 points.\u00a0<\/p>\n

With a heavy contingent of UConn fans at the Barclays Center and the team televised by NBC, Fudd and Bueckers gave the league a glimpse of what’s ahead for the Wings.<\/p>\n

\u201cReally proud of her, stayed the course,\u201d Dallas coach Jose Fernandez said, according to the Associated Press. <\/a>\u201cShe showed on the national stage, bright lights, tough place to play on national TV. Now everyone knows why we took her No. 1.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fudd has had success in Brooklyn. She scored 27 points in UConn’s win over Iowa at the Women’s Champions Classic at Barclays Center last season.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe atmosphere is incredible from when I was here with UConn and even more so tonight,\u201d Fudd said. \u201cSo having that experience with the crowd, it gets super loud. … It\u2019s definitely a really fun crowd.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fudd’s 17 points in the third was tied for the second-most by a rookie in a quarter.\u00a0Shoni Schimmel had 20 in a quarter as a rookie\u00a0for Phoenix.<\/p>\n

She also had two rebounds, three assists and five steals. Bueckers added six rebounds and two assists.<\/p>\n

Fudd started the second half and she could play herself into the starting lineup. At the very least, her minutes will continue to\u00a0increase.<\/p>\n

\u201cHer minutes have increased game by game,\u201d \u00a0Fernandez said. \u201cI think it\u2019s been a conversation. I think we\u2019re headed that direction. I think it showed with her being on the floor and what she did.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It took six games for Azzi Fudd to show the WNBA why the Dallas Wings made her the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":242729,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[12486,12485,9,24,55,54,56],"class_list":["post-242728","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-all-daily-sites","tag-ct-insider","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-city-headlines","tag-new-york-city-news","tag-ny"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242728","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=242728"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242728\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/242729"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}