TAMPA, Fla. — It has been a nine-year look ahead to UConn to get its twelfth nationwide championship. However in numerous methods, it got here at precisely the appropriate time.
The No. 2 seed Huskies completed their run by way of three No. 1 seeds — USC, UCLA and 82-59 vs. South Carolina within the NCAA last Sunday – with a title that maybe means a bit extra due to the journey this system and its senior star Paige Bueckers has been on to get it.
After profitable 4 championships in a row from 2013 to 2016 behind famous person Breanna Stewart, the Huskies hit a collection of roadblocks with powerful losses and damage heartbreaks.
However Sunday, the Huskies moved to the highest of the ladies’s basketball world once more, sending Bueckers — who is anticipated to be the WNBA’s No. 1 draft choose on April 14 — out along with her first nationwide championship.
A tearful Bueckers buried her face in coach Geno Auriemma’s shoulder as they hugged on the sideline when she exited the sport with simply over a minute left, mission finally achieved.
With guards Bueckers and Azzi Fudd, who missed most of final season with a knee damage, wholesome on the similar time, and the highest freshman within the nation in ahead Sarah Robust, UConn seemed like so lots of its championship groups of outdated. Not simply one of the best staff, however the staff that additionally performed one of the best.
Fudd and Robust each completed with 24 factors, and Bueckers had 17. Freshman Joyce Edwards and sophomore Tessa Johnson led South Carolina with 10 factors every because the Gamecocks fell in need of repeating as nationwide champions and completed 35-4.
UConn now has 12 wins within the Remaining 4 by 20 or extra factors. All different groups in D-I girls’s historical past have 11 such wins.
Bueckers was requested earlier than Sunday’s sport how she wish to be remembered at UConn.
“As an incredible teammate, an incredible chief. I feel these are the 2 most vital issues to me, simply being anyone that individuals like to play with, make their teammates higher, wears a UConn jersey with pleasure,” she mentioned.
Now, she additionally will probably be remembered as a nationwide champion. Admittedly, there have been factors in her profession the place it did not appear that might occur. UConn’s disappointments return, actually, to the tip of their 111-game profitable streak on the Remaining 4 in Dallas in 2017. The Huskies have been defeated on a buzzer-beater in extra time within the nationwide semifinals by Mississippi State.
Then in 2018, ’19, ’21 and ’24, the Huskies additionally misplaced within the nationwide semifinals. They fell within the 2022 nationwide championship sport to South Carolina, and missed the 2023 Remaining 4 – the one time since an Elite Eight loss in 2007 that the Huskies haven’t made the season’s last weekend. Bueckers missed the 2022-2023 season with a knee damage.
With Fudd out final season, the Huskies went all the way down to the wire with Iowa within the nationwide semifinals, however misplaced 71-69. That arrange numerous strain on Bueckers and the Huskies to make their desires come true this yr.
UConn wasn’t good this season as has been the case with six former UConn championship groups. However after an 80-76 loss at Tennessee of Feb. 6, the Huskies did not lose one other sport. They gained the Huge East regular-season and event titles, then dominated their approach by way of the NCAA event, ending 37-3.
Sunday, the Huskies took a 19-14 lead after a primary quarter that had a really quick tempo and a few intense protection inside from UConn. The Huskies set the tone by taking pictures 52.9% from the sector within the opening interval, whereas holding the Gamecocks to 40%. Not like UCLA in its semifinal loss to UConn, South Carolina was working the ball into the spots it wished, however did not end properly.
Robust’s emphatic block of a Raven Johnson layup try at 9:04 mark of the second quarter despatched a message, as did her play all through her first postseason.
Robust set an NCAA event report for factors by a freshman in a single event with 114. She handed Tennessee’s Tamika Catchings, who had 111 in 1998. That yr, by the way, Robust’s mom, Allison Feaster, led Harvard as a No. 16 seed previous No. 1 Stanford within the NCAA event. Feaster went on to a 10-season profession within the WNBA, the place her daughter will probably be headed in a couple of years.
Robust can also be the primary participant, no matter class, to have at the least 100 factors, 25 assists and10 blocks in a single NCAA event since blocks grew to become an official stat in 1988.
South Carolina coach Daybreak Staley predicted on Saturday that over the following few years, Robust may find yourself as one of the best Huskies participant of all. Which is saying a ton contemplating former UConn gamers like Stewart, Diana Taurasi, Swin Money and two of the latest Naismith Corridor of Fame inductees, Maya Moore and Sue Chook, who have been honored at Sunday’s sport.
UConn, which entered Sunday averaging 8.7 3-pointers per sport, had only one within the first half, however helped the Huskies’ enhance their momentum going into halftime. Ashlynn Shade hit from the left nook with 9 seconds left within the second quarter, sending the Huskies into the locker room up 36-26.
The Huskies continued to regulate the sport all through the second half. UConn is now 91-2 when main by double digits at halftime within the NCAA Event all-time. The 2 losses have been 2001 nationwide semifinal (up 12 at half) when it misplaced to eventual champion Notre Dame and within the 1989 first spherical (up 10 at half) in opposition to La Salle.
Auriemma was teaching in his first NCAA event in 1989, in his fourth season at UConn. The Huskies have now appeared in 36 NCAA tournaments and 24 Remaining Fours. Auriemma, who turned 71 in March, is the primary coach to win a championship at age 70 or older in Division I girls’s or males’s basketball.
He joked earlier than the sport that he thought of quitting a number of instances in the course of the season the previous few years, however then would go to apply and all the time be drawn again in.
“I feel there’s lots of people relying on me to maintain doing what I am doing at UConn — all my staff, all my workers,” Auriemma mentioned. “I feel they’re relying on me to maintain going and hold impacting and hold doing what we do.”
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