TAMPA, Fla. — It’s been a nine-year wait for UConn to get its 12th national championship. But in a lot of ways, it came at exactly the right time.
The Huskies, seeded at No. 2, recently completed a remarkable journey in the NCAA tournament. They triumphed over three No. 1 seeds, USC, UCLA, and achieved a dominating 82-59 victory against South Carolina in the final on Sunday. This victory holds special significance due to the challenges faced by the team and their senior standout, Paige Bueckers.
Following a previous era of success, where they secured four consecutive championships between 2013 and 2016 led by star player Breanna Stewart, the Huskies encountered setbacks in the form of difficult defeats and injuries.
Nevertheless, on Sunday, the Huskies reclaimed their position at the pinnacle of women’s college basketball. This victory not only secured another national title for the team but also marked a memorable milestone for Bueckers, who is anticipated to be the top pick in the upcoming WNBA draft on April 14.
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.
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 the team that also played the best.
Fudd and Strong both finished with 24 points, and Bueckers had 17. 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.
UConn now has 12 wins in the Final Four by 20 or more points. All other teams in D-I women’s history have 11 such wins.
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 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, ’19, ’21 and ’24, the Huskies also lost in the national semifinals. They fell in the 2022 national 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 2022-2023 season with a knee injury.
With Fudd out last season, the Huskies went down to the wire with Iowa in the national 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 former UConn championship teams. But after an 80-76 loss at Tennessee of 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, finishing 37-3.
Sunday, the Huskies took a 19-14 lead after a first quarter that had 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 9:04 mark of the second quarter sent a message, as did her play throughout her first postseason.
Strong set an NCAA tournament record for points by a freshman in a single tournament with 114. She passed 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 and10 blocks in a single NCAA tournament since blocks became an official stat in 1988.
South Carolina coach Dawn Staley predicted on Saturday that over the next few years, Strong might end up as the best Huskies player of all. Which is saying a ton considering former UConn players like 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 helped the Huskies’ increase their momentum going into halftime. Ashlynn Shade hit from the left corner with 9 seconds left in the second quarter, sending the Huskies into the locker room up 36-26.
The Huskies continued to control the game throughout the second half. UConn is now 91-2 when leading by double digits at halftime in the NCAA Tournament all-time. The two losses were 2001 national semifinal (up 12 at half) when it lost to eventual champion Notre Dame and in the 1989 first round (up 10 at half) 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.”
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