Azzi Fudd passing on WNBA draft for another year at UConn - ESPN

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,