Hartford — Of all the different imaginable lineup combinations Sunday as the UConn women's basketball team made a triumphant return to the XL Center in front of 9,359 fans — the big lineups, the one with all guards, the one consisting of last year's five returning starters — they had one thing in common. Paige Bueckers was in all of them.

Bueckers, the reigning consensus national player of the year, was on the floor for all 40 minutes in second-ranked UConn's 95-80 season-opening victory over Arkansas and finished with a career-high 34 points on 15 of 19 shooting, with six rebounds, four assists, two rebounds and two blocked shots.

Bueckers did not score in the first quarter, accumulating 34 points after that as UConn played its first game in front of its home fans since the 2019-20 season due to last year's COVID-19 protocols and its first game at the XL Center since March 2, 2020.

"She's pretty good, right? We just don't want to forget that," UConn coach Geno Auriemma said of Bueckers, the team's sophomore star.

"I think the first quarter may have been more a function of how (Evina Westbrook) and Christyn (Williams) got started. It really didn't bother me that much that first quarter. But then the second quarter we made a concerted effort to get (Bueckers) more involved and then the more she got involved, the more we kept looking for her."

A pair of senior guards, Williams had 18 points, four rebounds and three assists for UConn and Westbrook added 15 points, eight rebounds and a team-high five assists, hitting four 3-point field goals, as the Huskies avenged last season's 90-87 defeat at Arkansas.

UConn stormed to a 17-2 lead over the first five minutes, capped by a 3-pointer from Westbrook, a sequence in which every one of the Huskies' starters scored aside from Bueckers.

UConn led 24-16 after the first quarter and 49-39 at halftime, with Bueckers lighting things up with 12 points in the second quarter, including a shot she made in traffic in the paint on an assist from Olivia Nelson-Ododa. That was followed by Bueckers throwing her arms in the air to further engage the crowd which was seeing her play in person for the first time.

Bueckers closed the second quarter with a blocked shot, a pair of free throws, an assist back to Nelson-Ododa and a jump shot from the top of the key assisted by Westbrook.

"I just kind of took what the defense was giving me and what my teammates got me open," Bueckers said. "I just kind of read what the team needed. My shot was going in. It felt good. It was just rhythm. My teammates have a lot of confidence in me to make plays and to make things happen. I just try to do that.

"... I always want to pass first but ever since I got here coach has always told me that I need to score first if I want to pass at all."

Auriemma used nine players in all, with top-ranked freshman Azzi Fudd scoring seven points in her first career game, going 1-for-4 from 3-point range. But for all the talk of the additions to this UConn team — a highly touted freshman class, plus graduate transfer Dorka Juhasz — it was, for long stretches, much the same as last year's lineup which reached its 13th straight Final Four.

In addition to Bueckers, Westbrook played 38 minutes and Williams 36.

"We definitely came out really hot, with a lot of energy, really confident in what we were going to do from the beginning," Westbrook said. "We did definitely have a great start. It was great, especially for the younger guys to see and watch before they came in. I know there's a lot of first-game jitters for them."

Westbrook said the returning starters have been in this position before, whereas the newcomers have not.

"We've been freshmen," she said. "Playing in a new arena. Your family's here. You're thinking about the plays. You're thinking about not messing up. You're thinking about messing up. You're thinking about what coach is going to say if you mess up. There's a million things going through their minds. Just helping along with that."

Amber Ramirez had 20 points for Arkansas (2-1), which received votes in the preseason Associated Press Top 25 poll, Sasha Goforth 17 and Erynn Barnum 16.

Said Auriemma: "I went into the game thinking we could score and I went in thinking that it was going to be really hard to keep them from scoring. So I think whatever I was thinking, it came true."

v.fulkerson@theday.com