College
Bird was recruited by a number of teams, including Stanford and Vanderbilt. She considered UConn the favorite, but she began to waver when Kiersten Walters and Brianne Stepherson, both point guards, announced commitments to UConn. She worried that there might not be room for her to play. However, Stepherson changed her mind, and decided to go to Boston College, making the decision a bit easier, so Bird committed to UConn. In addition, she chose UConn because it was close to home, and the UConn program had a winning tradition like the one at Christ the King. She suffered a torn ACL eight games into her freshman season. She was not able to redshirt, because she had played in more than 20% of the team's games. In her sophomore season (1999–2000) she came back to lead the team to a 36–1 record and won the Big East Championship and the 2000 NCAA Women's Division I Basketball Tournament. The Huskies went 32–3 in her junior season. The last loss was to Big East rival Notre Dame in the Final Four. That was the last loss of Bird's college career, as the Huskies went an undefeated 39–0 in her 2002 senior season. In that season, she won the Wade Trophy and Naismith Award as College Player of the Year.
During her junior year, Bird played in a game against Notre Dame referred to as "the best women's basketball game ever played". The game was memorialized in a book, Bird at the Buzzer, in which Bird took the eponymous shot at the buzzer to win the game.
She finished her UConn career on many of the record lists. She currently ranks No. 24 on the 1,000 point list with 1,378 points, No. 2 in assists with 585, and seventh with 243 steals. She ranks number 1 in three point field goal percentage (45.9) and free throw percentage (89.2). She won two National Championships, three Big East Championships and Big East regular season titles. Bird was the inaugural winner of the Nancy Lieberman Award in 2000, given to the top point guard in the nation, and won the award in 2001 and 2002. Overall her record at UConn in games she played is a remarkable 114–4. Bird was a member of the inaugural class (2006) of inductees to the University of Connecticut women's basketball "Huskies of Honor" recognition program.
| Statistics at University of Connecticut | |||||||||||||||||||
| Year | G | FG | FGA | PCT | 3FG | 3FGA | PCT | FT | FTA | PCT | REB | AVG | A | TO | B | S | MIN | PTS | AVG |
| 1998–99 | 8 | 16 | 41 | 0.316 | 6 | 19 | 0.316 | 3 | 4 | 0.750 | 16 | 2.0 | 25 | 16 | 1 | 15 | 160 | 41 | 5.1 |
| 1999-00 | 37 | 140 | 279 | 0.502 | 72 | 145 | 0.497 | 53 | 59 | 0.898 | 94 | 2.5 | 160 | 80 | 1 | 69 | 1052 | 405 | 10.9 |
| 2000–01 | 34 | 137 | 309 | 0.443 | 60 | 139 | 0.432 | 35 | 45 | 0.778 | 89 | 2.6 | 169 | 88 | 4 | 63 | 941 | 369 | 10.9 |
| 2001–02 | 39 | 198 | 392 | 0.505 | 69 | 148 | 0.466 | 98 | 104 | 0.942 | 131 | 3.4 | 231 | 93 | 9 | 96 | 1168 | 563 | 14.4 |
| Totals | 118 | 491 | 1021 | 0.481 | 207 | 451 | 0.459 | 189 | 212 | 0.892 | 330 | 2.8 | 585 | 277 | 15 | 243 | 3321 | 1378 | 11.7 |
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“Jerry: She’s one of those third-year girls that gripe my liver.
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