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Quiet. That was Azzi Fudd’s first impression of Sarah Strong when she met the No. 1 recruit on her official visit. Fudd had heard Strong’s name before—the coaches at UConn talked about the 6-2 forward from Grace Christian (NC) “a lot,” she says, and Fudd herself had seen highlights of Strong online and knew how good she was. Plus, Fudd’s teammate KK Arnold, who had played 3x3 basketball with Strong and was her host on the visit, raved about the Class of 2024 superstar.
“KK was like, Sarah’s got this huge personality,” Fudd says. Looking back, Strong ended up being a lot different than Fudd was initially expecting. “I couldn’t comprehend who [KK] was talking about. It’s not that Sarah I had known [at first].”
Strong arrived to Storrs as a shy, introverted and soft-spoken freshman. Her game was anything but. The No. 1 recruit in the country and the Naismith High School Player of the Year, Strong possessed a rare and versatile skill set that allowed her to fit effortlessly into UConn’s system. She held her own alongside superstar seniors like Paige Bueckers and Fudd, as well as sharpshooting guard Kaitlyn Chen and bucket-getting sophomores like Ashlynn Shade, Arnold and Ice Brady.
She made an impact right from the jump. In her UConn debut on Nov. 7, 2024, Strong had 17 points and shot an impressive 66.7 percent from the field in a 54-point blowout win over Boston University. Her talent and skill was undeniable and, as Coach Geno Auriemma told the media (per CT Insider), it was like “having two or three players” on the court. In her third game, No. 21 posted her first double-double, finishing with 14 points and 13 rebounds against North Carolina.
Later that month, the team took a trip to the Bahamas for the Baha Mar Women’s Championship, and it was then that Fudd, who roomed with Strong, got to see a different side of the freshman phenom. One night, Fudd was on her iPad when Strong started opening up. “There was this cute moment [where] she was trying to open up a little bit, and we’re trying to get to know each other a little bit outside of basketball,” Fudd says looking back. “I started to see her real personality come out.”
As the Huskies continued to build chemistry, which was a major focus throughout the 2024-25 season, they bonded through shared interests and TikTok dances, all while two-stepping their way to their best record since the 2017-18 season: 37-3.
Strong led the team in rebounds per game (8.9) and ranked second in scoring with 16.4 points per behind Bueckers. She set the freshman record for total boards (356) and became just the second Husky ever to amass more than 600 points as a freshman. The first to do it? UConn legend and all-time great Maya Moore.
In the NCAA tournament, Strong was a double-double machine, averaging 19 points and 11.7 rebounds as the Huskies went on a perfect run. She set the NCAA tournament record for most points scored by a freshman, including 22 in the national semifinal win over UCLA, which made her just the third UConn freshman ever to have at least 20 points in a Final Four game (only Moore and Breanna Stewart have done so). Then, in the title game against South Carolina, Strong put up a stat line no one in the history of women’s college basketball had recorded on that stage before: 24 points, 15 rebounds and 5 assists.
“I've never played with someone so smart, so skilled, so good at everything,” Fudd tells us. “She's got the best IQ ever, but she looks like she’s not trying half the time. And I think it's incredible that she'll have, like, almost a triple-double, and it barely looks like she's breaking a sweat.”
The Huskies dominated the Gamecocks, 82-59, and won their first title since 2016, restoring glory to Storrs. With a national championship and plenty of records on her résumé, Strong solidified herself as one of the best freshmen in college hoops, but what we saw from her last year was just the beginning.
As we go to press, UConn is undefeated to start the 2025-26 season and has extended their winning streak to an impressive 33 games. While all the Huskies aim for perfection, it’s Strong who is currently leading them in almost every major statistical category, including points, rebounds, blocks and steals.
The Sarah Strong that opponents have to go up against now is even more experienced and poised. She’ll snatch the ball from her opponent’s hands and then run the floor and finish it at the other end. She can dish out dimes to her teammates or knock down shots from beyond the arc with ease. The general consensus is that Strong plays well beyond her years, but if you ask those who really know her, they’ll also tell you that there’s a lot more to learn about her, too.
“She's crazy,” Fudd reveals to us. “The best way I can describe it for people who don't know her is, like, she matches KK’s energy, [but] they would never expect it.”
While everyone sees a player who makes it all look so easy, the truth is that Sarah Strong was actually quite nervous when she first arrived on the UConn campus the summer before her freshman year. “I was just overthinking a lot of stuff,” she reveals. “They had this run, and I was like, Oh my gosh, I'm so tired. How am I supposed to practice for three hours? The physicality, the sets, just every little thing that you could overthink about.” Strong tried to push through the conditioning tests, but found one workout in particular—a three-minute-long test where they had to get 25 line touches—pretty challenging. “It took me a few tries,” she says looking back.
Strong tried not to put expectations on herself as a freshman and instead focused on getting more comfortable with her teammates and the coaches. She admittedly didn’t know what to expect when it came to Auriemma being “very serious,” or even longtime associate head coach Chris Dailey’s “strict” rules. “I still can’t to this day read him,” Strong says of Auriemma. “If he's joking or when he makes those little comments, I'm like, I can't tell if you're serious...We've gotten a lot better at it now—I know what to expect. But both of them were just really intimidating. I was kind of scared of both.”
Then there was the yelling.
“Seeing [Geno] yell at Paige or one of the upperclassmen, and, like, he's saying some kind of hurtful things, I was like, Oh, wow. Is that normal here? It is,” she admits.
For Strong, UConn has always been the goal. Originally from Spain, she grew up admiring her mother Allison Feaster’s hustle on the court (Feaster was drafted by the Los Angeles Sparks in ’98 with the fifth overall pick and went on to become an All-Star in ’04) and has memories of going to her practices. She moved to the United States in fifth grade and would watch highlights of Maya Moore on YouTube with her dad, Danny, and try to add parts of Moore’s game to her own, all while dreaming of becoming a Husky one day. “It was always my dream school,” she says. “A lot of my favorite players played here, and I just wanted to be part of what they built here.”
UConn was there early, even when Strong was seemingly flying under the radar as a recruit. She was just a sophomore at Grace Christian when Auriemma’s assistant, Jamelle Elliott, saw her play for the first time. “[She] came back and said, I just saw a young kid that I think is exactly what we’re looking for,” Auriemma says. “Then I saw her. I was amazed that for such a young player, [she had] the poise and the composure. The way she carried herself on the court, it really was unique.”
Auriemma and his staff followed the same process that they do with every recruit: get in the gym and watch her play, develop a relationship with Danny—also Strong’s high school coach—and let them know what UConn could offer Strong. As she began to garner national attention, earning 2023 and ’24 Gatorade North Carolina Girls Basketball Player of the Year, the recruiting process began to feel “overwhelming,” she says now. After visiting UConn multiple times with friends and family, she knew in her heart that she was always meant to be a Husky. “After I committed, I definitely felt relief,” she says.
With her commitment came lots of attention, especially from the media and fans online wanting to see how Sarah would transition from high school to college. Strong remembers Auriemma telling her to do what she did in high school and remain confident. “Pretty much it all goes back to that,” she says, “just kind of believing in myself and not really changing the way I play, just still being comfortable and being able to go out there and do what I used to do.”
While Auriemma initially saw a quiet, introverted and shy Strong, he also recognized that she possessed a rare gift. It reminded him of the very best he’s coached throughout his 41 years at the helm. “I even went all the way back to our first Final Four team in 1991. We had a kid from New Hampshire, way under the radar and built very similar to Sarah as a high school player, and her name was Kerry Bascom,” he says. “She was arguably our best ballhandler, our best passer, our best rebounder, the Big East Player of the Year her sophomore, junior and senior years,” Auriemma says. “Now you fast forward 30-some years, and you say, This is the evolution of women's basketball…Through all the iterations of what women’s basketball has become, you’ve got a kid that size that can handle a ball like a guard, pass like any guard or any really good player, can shoot it as well as anyone on the floor, wants to rebound, wants to play defense.”
Strong’s game has earned a lot of comparisons to both Moore and Denver Nuggets star Nikola Jokic, another more reserved champion. Bueckers recently called her “Young GOAT” when she was asked to name her top college basketball players, a list that included Stewart, AD Durr, Stephen Curry and Jimmer Fredette. With her otherworldly skill set, Strong’s true superpower is her ability to lock in on the task at hand, even at a young age.
“She listens to everything you say, and she pays attention to everything that's going on. Maybe that's why she's got such a high IQ,” Auriemma says. “Whenever you're speaking, whether it's to her or someone else, she's locked in and really looking to figure out, How do I learn from this? How do I get better?...You don't have to repeat yourself. And to me, that’s a rarity in college basketball.”
Off the court, Fudd has noticed how good Strong is at everything, from musical instruments to learning new hobbies. “She’s a fast learner, and she teaches herself things. She can play piano, she teaches herself how to play guitar, how to do a Rubik's Cube. It's just, like, so many things,” Fudd says. “There's got to be a word for it, for someone who can just pick things up and teach themselves some things.”
The word Azzi might be thinking of is prodigy, which explains Strong’s ability to not only thrive—and win—at UConn so early on in her college career, but how she can learn things insanely quickly. We saw this firsthand when we were with her at the team’s practice facility, the Werth Family UConn Basketball Champions Center, for her first SLAM cover shoot. Strong seemed comfortable with the cameras and was all smiles when her teammates, including Fudd and Arnold, jokingly interrupted the shoot to hype her up. At one point, Strong even clapped back at Fudd about how she can apparently sing. When we asked her to try spinning a ball on her finger while simultaneously rocking one of the Huskies’ diamond-encrusted 2025 NCAA championship rings, Strong, who seemed nervous at first and even joked that she didn’t want to make the wrong move or send the ring flying across the gym, tried it anyway. And then she just kept doing it over and over until the shot was perfect.
The next step for Strong in her development is finding her voice. After observing both Fudd’s and Bueckers’ styles of leadership, it’s something she’s trying to grow into. “They both lead in a lot of different ways, [but] vocally that's kind of out of my comfort zone,” Strong says. “I’m still trying to work on that because Paige, when things went wrong, she would huddle us up and [say], You got to pick it up. So I’m just still trying to figure that part out.”
This season, Auriemma has already seen a shift in how Strong carries herself. “She’s on the court now acting almost like a senior instead of a sophomore,” he says. “I think last year she was way more deferential to everybody else, but this year, I see her—she’s got a lot to say about a lot of things and talks a little bit of trash that makes me laugh. [If] she threw a bad pass or missed a shot, or I think she fouled somebody and I called her on it during practice, before she would just kind of shrink. Now she wants to go at me.”
It’s a moment that perfectly encapsulates both where Strong is now and where she’s headed. “She’s getting to act like Paige, like, I did get fouled, I get fouled every time I miss!” he says with a laugh.
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