Azzi Fudd touched down in Texas for the first time on Wednesday afternoon, just two days after going No. 1 overall in the WNBA draft to the Dallas Wings, but the UConn women’s basketball star had already secured cowboy boots in time for her introductory press conference Thursday.

Fudd arrived wearing monochrome black boots to complement her brown and black plaid blazer set, a tribute to the country stylings of her new home. After spending the last five years in Storrs, the former Huskies guard is excited for a fresh start in Dallas on and off the basketball court.

“I’m super excited to be a part of this culture in Dallas, whatever that looks like,” Fudd said during the press conference. “I think my first stops will definitely be barbecue and Tex-Mex places … I need to go get some — I’m wearing a pair of cowboy boots, but I need to get a hat. I really just want to embrace the culture, so I’m looking forward to everything.”

Fudd was the Wings’ second consecutive No. 1 draft pick after they selected fellow UConn great Paige Bueckers with the top pick in 2025. Fudd and Bueckers are just the second college teammates ever chosen first in back-to-back drafts, joining another pair of Huskies legends in Tina Charles (2010) and Maya Moore (2011). Fudd is the seventh No. 1 pick in program history, extending UConn’s already-massive record in the category. No other team has had more than two alumni selected No. 1 in the draft.

“It’s just the standard of excellence that the coaches and the staff have every single day (at UConn), whether it’s in the weight room, in the training room, on the court,” Fudd said. “You don’t skip reps. You do everything with purpose, with complete discipline, and I think that just prepares you for the next level. It makes it easier to transition, because you know how to play the game and you know how to play with other great players.”

Dallas seriously considered multiple players prior to making the No. 1 pick, but general manager Curt Miller said all roads eventually led them back to Fudd. The Wings were in desperate need of an automatic outside shooter like Fudd after finishing last in the league in 3-point percentage last season, and Miller said the Huskies star’s defense also stood out in the evaluation process. Dallas had the WNBA’s second-worst scoring defense in 2025, allowing 88 points per game.

“We traveled all over the world watching this incredible draft class, but it came back always to Azzi,” Miller said. “Words that we heard over and over again in the in the investigation of her was a winner, a competitor, a hard worker. Obviously, the skill set speaks for itself. An incredible shooter, probably one of the quickest releases in the game today, a defender with a lot of competitiveness and toughness, and ultimately all the intangibles.”

Fudd’s success at UConn also factored into the equation, especially for first-year Wings coach Jose Fernandez. Fernandez is a longtime friend of Geno Auriemma and coached against the Huskies for more than two decades decades during his 25 seasons as the head women’s basketball coach at South Florida. The first scouting trip Fernandez took after he was hired by the Wings in late October was to Storrs to connect with Fudd, and he was immediately impressed.

“Me having so much familiarity with the UConn program, (I saw) her basketball IQ, her work ethic, her being a leader in the locker room, the growth that she’s made, the adversity that she’s gone through, the resilience,” Fernandez said. “I know her willingness to be coached, because the great ones want to be coached. … She just stood out for me, and she stood out for our front office. This is what we needed.”

Fudd intentionally avoided thinking ahead about her future in the WNBA during her redshirt senior season at UConn, and that mentality resulted turned in the best year of her college career. While the Huskies ultimately came up short in their pursuit of a repeat NCAA Championship, Fudd was named a consensus first team All-American and averaged career highs in points (17.3), assists (3.1) and steals (2.5) to help lead UConn to a 38-1 record. It was also the healthiest year Fudd had with the Huskies, appearing in all 39 games after missing at least six due to injury in every previous season.

“My mindset this whole college season was just stay in the present, focus on my team, focus on winning, focus on getting better every single day,” Fudd said. “I really trusted that, if I took care of what I needed to every single day in college, I would land where I was supposed to be. Wherever that looked like, whoever that was with, I was going to be grateful, and I couldn’t be happier with how that worked out and where I am now.”

The turnaround from the end of the college season to the first day of WNBA training camp is always brutally short, but the players drafted in 2026 get even less time than is typical. In 2025, camp began on April 27, 13 days after the draft and three weeks from the NCAA championship game. This year, Fudd played her last college game April 3, was drafted Monday and will begin her first training camp less than a week later on Sunday.

But despite the accelerated timeline, Fudd said her body feels as good as it ever has entering her first professional season.

“I think just being super intentional since beginning of this past (college) season, starting with my diet, with just my regimen, my sleep schedule,” Fudd said. “With everything going on, I’m trying to control what I can control, because I knew that this next year was going to be chaos. So I think just continuing being disciplined in how I take care of myself, take care of my body, I feel as prepared as I can be going into this.”

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