SPOKANE, Wash. — Azzi Fudd took her time weighing the options about her future before deciding to return to the UConn women’s basketball team for a fifth year in 2025-26, but teammate Caroline Ducharme made sure Fudd knew how badly she wanted her in Storrs next season.
Ducharme was pitching Fudd to play another year in college even before the redshirt junior walked in UConn’s Senior Day ceremony, but the indecisive star guard kept her waiting. The pair were recovering in UConn’s athletic training room after a practice last week when Ducharme once again started her prodding, and finally, Fudd gave in.
“Every once in a while, I’d be like, ‘So, any closer (to deciding)?” Ducharme said with a smile. “One day I just asked her when we were in the tubs, and she was like, ‘Don’t tell anyone, but I did make the decision.’ I was just so happy. I’m so happy for her that she’s able to go into the tournament with a clear mind and not have to think about it anymore, and obviously it helps that the decision was for her to come back.”
Fudd announced on Tuesday that she will use her redshirt season in 2025-26, the day after UConn advanced to the Sweet 16 with a 91-57 win over South Dakota State. And while sophomore Ashlynn Shade said she had a gut feeling that Fudd would be back next season, the Huskies didn’t get official confirmation from the star guard until moments before she made the decision public with an Instagram post. Freshman guard Allie Ziebell said Fudd broke the news with a simple text to the team group chat: “Hey guys, sorry I forgot to tell you, but I’m coming back!”
“Everyone just started loving the message and being like, ‘Oh my god, no way!’ And then we saw on Instagram literally like 30 seconds later her post,” Ziebell laughed. “We’re lucky to have her back. Just how she carries herself, how she handles things, I’ve just been asking her a lot of questions because she’s very helpful.”
Fudd was eligible to declare for the 2025 WNBA Draft and was projected as a first-round pick amid the most complete season of her college career. The redshirt junior is averaging 13.4 points for UConn over a career-high 30 game appearances, and she is among the most efficient 3-point shooters in the country hitting 45.3% from beyond the arc plus 48.6% from the field and 92.6% at the free throw line. But despite the triumphs of this season, Fudd said her time with the Huskies still feels incomplete. She has missed at least 11 games in each of her previous three years with the program due to injuries, including almost her entire junior season with an ACL and meniscus tear.
Coach Geno Auriemma was the first person Fudd told about her plans to return, and his pitch was a key factor in keeping her at UConn for another year.
“It’s going to be hard, but I’ve accepted that challenge. It’s exactly why I want to stay another year,” Fudd said. “Having that extra year to develop as a leader, work on things on the court, but I think the most important thing is my leadership. There’s a lot of basketball stuff and details but I think just having one more year to work on my skills, work on myself, be a better leader, have a full year, and Coach mentioned, to reach my UConn potential, so I want to have that.”
Ducharme and Fudd came to UConn together as top-five recruits in the class of 2021, but both have had their careers marred by injuries. Ducharme, like Fudd, missed almost the entire 2023-24 season recovering from lingering head and neck injuries that also limited her in 2022-23 and for the majority of this year. Ducharme will also return to the Huskies to use her redshirt year in 2025-26, and it’s especially meaningful to the classmates that they’ll get to finish their college journeys together with one final season.
“It’s crazy, because I feel like now with transfer and injuries, not a lot of classes come in as freshmen and get to stay all four years,” Ducharme said. “We were recruited together, we went on visits together, we talked about coming here together, and then when we finally got here we had injuries and were out and kind of always were missing each other, but we’ve always still been there for each other to help each other through it. To have one last year, both healthy knock on wood definitely means a lot.”
Fudd’s decision was a relief for Auriemma, in more ways than one. He now only has to worry about losing one superstar this offseason in redshirt senior Paige Bueckers, but he also hopes having the weight of her future plans off her shoulder will allow Fudd to play with a freer mindset through the rest of this year’s NCAA Tournament.
“Sometimes these things weigh on players’ minds, as they should. It’s a big decision,” Auriemma said. “You want to try to have as few distractions in your head as possible at this time of the year, so having made that decision clears a few things up for her and hopefully allows her to just focus on playing and doing what she does best.”
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