TAMPA, Fla. — It had been a nine-year wait for UConn to get its 12th national championship. But after the No. 2 seed Huskies finished their run through three No. 1 seeds — USC, UCLA and 82-59 vs. South Carolina in the NCAA final Sunday — they won a title that means a little more because of the journey that came before it.
After winning four championships in a row from 2013 to 2016 behind superstar Breanna Stewart, the Huskies hit a series of roadblocks with tough losses and injury heartbreaks.
But on Sunday, the Huskies moved to the top of the women’s basketball world again, sending senior guard Paige Bueckers — who is expected to be the WNBA’s No. 1 draft pick on April 14 — out with her first national championship.
A tearful Bueckers buried her face in coach Geno Auriemma’s shoulder as they hugged on the sideline when she exited the game with just over a minute left, mission at last accomplished.
“It’s been a story of resilience, of gratitude, of overcoming adversity and just responding to life’s challenges,” Bueckers said.
With guards Bueckers and Azzi Fudd, who missed most of last season with a knee injury, healthy at the same time, and the top freshman in the nation in forward Sarah Strong, UConn looked like so many of its championship teams of old. Not just the best team, but also the team that played the best.
Fudd and Strong finished with 24 points each, and Bueckers had 17. For her efforts, Fudd was named the Most Outstanding Player of the Final Four. Meanwhile, freshman Joyce Edwards and sophomore Tessa Johnson led South Carolina with 10 points each as the Gamecocks fell short of repeating as national champions and finished 35-4. The 10 points are the fewest by any team’s leading scorer in a women’s NCAA final.
UConn now has 12 wins in the Final Four by 20 or more points. All other teams in Division I women’s history have 11 combined. The Huskies’ 23-point margin of victory ties for the third largest in championship game history behind two previous UConn teams that won by 33 (vs. Louisville in 2013) and 31 (vs. Syracuse in 2016).
“They did a masterful job in executing on both sides of the basketball,” South Carolina coach Dawn Staley said.
Bueckers was asked before Sunday’s game how she would like to be remembered at UConn.
“As a great teammate, a great leader. I think those are the two most important things to me, just being somebody that people love to play with, make their teammates better, wears a UConn jersey with pride,” she said.
Now, she also will be remembered as a national champion. Admittedly, there were points in her career where it didn’t seem as if that would happen. UConn’s disappointments go back, in fact, to the end of their 111-game winning streak at the Final Four in Dallas in 2017. The Huskies were defeated on a buzzer-beater in overtime in the national semifinals by Mississippi State.
Then in 2018, 2019, 2021 and 2024, the Huskies also lost in the semifinals. They fell in the 2022 championship game to South Carolina, and missed the 2023 Final Four — the only time since an Elite Eight loss in 2007 that the Huskies have not made the season’s final weekend. Bueckers missed the 2022-23 season with a knee injury.
With Fudd out last season, the Huskies went down to the wire with Iowa in the semifinals but lost 71-69. That set up a lot of pressure on Bueckers and the Huskies to make their dreams come true this year.
UConn wasn’t perfect this season, as has been the case with six of the school’s former championship teams. But after an 80-76 loss at Tennessee on Feb. 6, the Huskies didn’t lose another game. They won the Big East regular-season and tournament titles, then dominated their way through the NCAA tournament (including wins over 1-seeds USC, UCLA and South Carolina) to finish 37-3.
On Sunday, the Huskies took a 19-14 lead after a first quarter that featured a very fast pace and some intense defense inside from UConn. The Huskies set the tone by shooting 52.9% from the field in the opening period while holding the Gamecocks to 40%. Unlike UCLA in its semifinal loss to UConn, South Carolina was working the ball into the spots it wanted, but didn’t finish well.
Strong’s emphatic block of a Raven Johnson layup attempt at the 9:04 mark of the second quarter sent a message, as did her play throughout her first postseason.
Strong set a record for points by a freshman in a single NCAA tournament with 114, passing Tennessee’s Tamika Catchings, who had 111 in 1998. That year, incidentally, Strong’s mother, Allison Feaster, led Harvard as a No. 16 seed past No. 1 Stanford in the NCAA tournament. Feaster went on to a 10-season career in the WNBA, where her daughter will be headed in a few years.
Strong is also the first player (regardless of class) to have at least 100 points, 25 assists and 10 blocks in a single NCAA tournament since blocks became an official stat in 1988.
“I did better than I was expecting,” said the soft-spoken Strong, who also had 15 rebounds and five assists Sunday.
Staley predicted Saturday that over the next few years, Strong might end up as the best Huskies player of all. Which is saying a ton considering UConn boasts former players such as Stewart, Diana Taurasi, Swin Cash and two of the most recent Naismith Hall of Fame inductees, Maya Moore and Sue Bird, who were honored at Sunday’s game.
UConn, which entered Sunday averaging 8.7 3-pointers per game, had just one in the first half, but that shot — by Ashlynn Shade from the left corner with nine seconds left — gave the Huskies momentum going into halftime up 36-26.
The Huskies continued to control the game throughout the second half, and the big lead allowed the UConn starters to exit to loud ovations. UConn is now 91-2 when leading by double digits at halftime in the NCAA tournament. The two losses were the 2001 national semifinal (up 12 at the half), when it lost to eventual champion Notre Dame, and in the 1989 first round (up 10) against La Salle.
Auriemma was coaching in his first NCAA tournament in 1989, in his fourth season at UConn. The Huskies have now appeared in 36 NCAA tournaments and 24 Final Fours. Auriemma, who turned 71 in March, is the first coach to win a championship at age 70 or older in Division I women’s or men’s basketball.
He joked before the game that he thought about quitting multiple times during the season the past few years, but then would go to practice and always be drawn back in.
“I think there’s a lot of people counting on me to keep doing what I’m doing at UConn — all my team, all my staff,” Auriemma said. “I think they’re counting on me to keep going and keep impacting and keep doing what we do.
“Maybe what this [championship] means is that there were a lot of people that didn’t think it would ever happen. There are a lot of people that hoped it would never happen. I’m glad we were able to get to that spot that Connecticut has occupied. In the last 30 years, I don’t know that any program has meant more to their sport than what UConn has meant to women’s basketball.”
Source link
