One doesn’t see many Asian faces in in American basketball championships (the last time I can recall was when Jeremy Lin won the NBA championship with the 2019 Toronto Raptors), so it was a pleasant surprise to see Kaitlyn Chen cutting down the net after winning the NCAA Women’s Basketball Championship with the University of Connecticut. ESPN has put up this highlight reel of her path to the championship. This video doesn’t cover her path to getting to UConn, which came after four years at Princeton.
Kaitlyn Chen was a star player at Princeton. Because she didn’t play during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, she had an extra year of NCAA eligibility. Geno Auriemma, the legendary basketball coach at UConn, first became interested in her during 2022 when Chen’s Princeton team nearly beat his Huskies. The Ivy League doesn’t allow graduate students to be NCAA athletes, so she chose to play at UConn. UCLA (Chen is from the Los Angeles area) was said to be the other possible choice, and ironically, UConn beat UCLA on the path to the championship.
Looking at the highlight reel, you can see that Chen can make impressive plays. She can score with her left or right hand, and some of her assists are pretty spectacular. She is cited as being a possible draft choice in the WNBA, although she has not officially declared.
(photo credit: UConn Women’s Basketball)
