STORRS — The UConn women’s basketball team’s underclassmen spent the week leading up to Senior Day placing bets on who would cry the hardest during Sunday’s postgame ceremony.
Redshirt senior Azzi Fudd said Saturday that she didn’t know what the team was expecting from her, but she had her own prediction: If anything was going to break her, it would be classmate Caroline Ducharme.
“This is so special, to be able to go to school with your best friend, and to be able to stay here and go through all this,” Fudd said. “I think that’s definitely going to be a reason why I cry, just thinking about how far we’ve come and how much we’ve grown together.”
The star guard’s assessment was spot on: Her eyes were mostly dry by the time she walked across the court surrounded by her family, but she was swiping at tears with the collar of her jersey while watching from the tunnel as Ducharme was announced in front of the sold-out crowd at Gampel Pavilion.
Fudd walked on Senior Day in 2025 before deciding to return for a fifth season with the Huskies, but this year’s ceremony carried a different emotional intensity. Part of it was the finality, the knowledge that there’s no coming back this time around, but it was also the opportunity to walk alongside Ducharme after the rollercoaster of adversity both endured during their college careers. Through all of the highs and lows, they’re leaving UConn the same way they arrived: Together.
“We were just talking about this in the training room, showing pictures of us when we met in seventh grade,” Ducharme said Saturday with a smile. “It’s just funny how much we’ve gone through together. Who would have though that 10 or whatever years later, we would be in this situation?”
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The first time Fudd remembers hearing Ducharme’s name was in the backseat of her family’s car on the way to an AAU tournament. Fudd was the No. 1 recruit in the Class of 2021, and her parents — who were also her coaches — mentioned during the drive that another top-rated prospect from Massachusetts would be there to provide some tough competition.
“I’m like, ‘Caroline Ducharme…,’ trying to picture who this girl is,” Fudd said with a laugh. “Then watching her I was like oh, she is really good.”
The pair didn’t formally meet until both were selected to participate in Blue Star 30, a camp for elite girls basketball players, in seventh grade. Fudd spent most of her youth career playing up a level on older teams, so she didn’t have many friends her own age, but she instantly felt a connection with Ducharme. They remained close throughout high school, and after Ducharme committed to UConn in April 2020, it helped give Fudd the push she needed to sign with the Huskies herself a few months later.
“She was part of the reason I came here in the first place,” Fudd said. “There’s pictures of us together where we’re both like, skinny and awkward, but we immediately clicked. We’d text each other whenever we could coordinate tournaments, we’d hang out and get lunch or hang out in the bleaches between games. Just to know that’s where we we started, that’s where we’re coming from to now, it’s incredible.”
The younger versions of Fudd and Ducharme never could have anticipated the challenges they would face at UConn; When they signed, both expected they’d be out of college already by 2026. Over her first four years with the Huskies, Fudd missed exactly as many games as she appeared in (76) due to a series of increasingly serious injuries: A foot injury that sidelined her for 11 games her freshman year, a knee injury that kept her out of 22 games in 2022-23, then the devastating ACL tear two games into her junior season.
Ducharme made 11 starts in 31 appearances as a freshman, and Auriemma frequently reminisces on the stretch where Ducharme carried the team while Fudd and former superstar Paige Bueckers were both out with knee injuries. But Ducharme suffered her first head injury in February of that season, then missed 13 games with a concussion her sophomore year. She dealt with neck spasms that kept her out her for all but the first four games of 2023-24, and she didn’t return to the court until late February 2025. Though Ducharme has played in 16 games this season, the impacts of the head and neck injuries still linger. She’s missed six games due to migraines and is often limited in practice depending on how she feels day-to-day.
“I’m sure the two of them sit on the back of the bus and can talk about all the scars they have — mental scars, physical scars,” coach Geno Auriemma said. “It’s always good when you’ve got company out there, and it’s special when it’s somebody that you’ve spent that much time with.”
Fudd and Ducharme have shared the floor just 54 times in five years, but the depth of their bond was formed behind the scenes and on the sidelines where they had to lean on each other for strength.
“We’ve both been through our fair share, but I think we’ve always had each other’s backs,” Ducharme said. “I don’t think I would have been able to get through this without her, and I think she appreciates my support — I hope. It’s special to have somebody like that who you can always count on through the hard times.”
UConn’s Azzi Fudd, left, reaches to adjust teammate Caroline Ducharme’s hair as the team warms up with out them before an NCAA college basketball game against Butler, Saturday, Jan. 21, 2023, in Storrs, Conn. Fudd is out with a knee injury and Ducharme is on a concussion protocol. (AP Photo/Jessica Hill)
Junior point guard KK Arnold knew she would be emotional when Fudd and Ducharme walked on Senior Day after watching them overcome so much first-hand during her three years with the Huskies. In the team’s betting pool, everyone believed she’d be one of the first to cry.
But Arnold said nobody predicted the breakdown from freshman Kelis Fisher, who was practically inconsolable as video montages dedicated to the fifth-year seniors played on the jumbotron. Fisher’s tears were rivaled only by sophomore Kayleigh Heckel, who like Fisher has been at UConn just a few months since transferring from USC.
“Kelis, we expected me, her, a couple of others to cry, but she actually cried the hardest in my opinion,” Arnold said, as Fudd nodded in agreement beside her. “I was surprised about that, because I was like, ‘oh, she’s gonna keep it in real quick,’ but she actually was the top one.”
It’s a testament to how much Fudd and Ducharme mean to their teammates, even those they’ve only had a single season with. Ducharme is affectionately known as the team mom and joked that she has a revolving door of younger players constantly coming through her apartment. Arnold, trying to keep from crying again during the postgame press conference, described both as older sisters to her and said she never anticipated how deep those relationships would become.
“I’m sure Kelis probably is really emotional, probably sitting there thinking, ‘How am I going to get through next year without these guys,’” Auriemma said. “I’m glad they feel that way. That tells you even more about that senior class that they’ve been able to touch not just their classmates, but the young guys as well.”
Fudd and Ducharme are trying not to dwell on the ‘lasts’ of their college careers yet, especially with plenty of season left to play. Their actual final game at Gampel Pavilion won’t come until the second round of the NCAA Tournament, and if the team accomplishes its goal of returning to the national championship, they’ll have 11 more opportunities to take the court in UConn uniforms.
But Fudd is relishing the power to weaponize her teammates’ emotions about the impending end, reminding them that she’ll be gone soon any time she doesn’t get her way.
“It’s been pretty great, because any time I want to do something with someone or want to convince someone of something, it’s like, ‘Well, I only have two months, so you have to,’” Fudd said, grinning. “‘This is our last time to do this.’ They’re like, ‘You can’t do that,’ and I’m like yes, I can! So I’m just kind of dangling that in front of them, like you have to hang out with me.”