Some college basketball fans have been wondering whether Paige Bueckers, the star UConn guard who will miss the season with a knee injury, would enter the W.N.B.A. draft after this season instead of returning for her senior year with the Huskies.

Bueckers answered unequivocally on Thursday.

“I’m not leaving. That is not in the question,” Bueckers told reporters. “People asked me, ‘What are you thinking about your fifth year, Covid year, redshirting this year?’ I’m not thinking too far ahead about that at all, but I will be playing college basketball again.”

Bueckers, a 20-year-old junior from Minnesota who was the national player of the year as a freshman, can stay through the 2024-25 season after the N.C.A.A. gave athletes a bonus year of eligibility because of the pandemic.

Considering her talents, Bueckers’s plan to return for at least one more year is good news for UConn fans, women’s college basketball and Bueckers’ checking account.

She stands to make more money from name, image and likeness opportunities in college than she would earn in the W.N.B.A.

“I mean, she’s going to make well over a million dollars. It’s not even a question,” Jason Belzer, the chief executive of Student Athlete NIL, an agency that works with brands doing campaigns for student athletes, said Friday in a phone interview. “She probably has more value as a student athlete from a marketing and endorsement perspective than she will as a pro, unless she becomes an absolute All-Star, Sue Bird-like person.”

Read more (via NY Times)