By Jeffery Green | @Jeffery_Agreen
Sports Capital Journalism Program
TAMPA – For the first time since 2016, the UConn Huskies are national champions, beating South Carolina 82-59.
UConn dominated the entire NCAA tournament this year, winning on average by 32 points, including 23 in the championship game. This is also the first time in NCAA history that a team beat three No. 1-seeds in a single tournament.
The domination has spanned way past this season, as UConn won its 12th tournament championship, the most of any NCAA basketball program in history. All titles have been under coach Geno Auriemma, 71, who became the oldest coach to win a Division I basketball title, women’s or men’s. Coming off his 40th season for the Huskies, the question everyone is asking is if he will retire.
“This is one of the most emotional Final Fours and emotional national championships I’ve been a part of since that very first one,” Auriemma said. “These kids are fun. But there is going to come a time when the fun doesn’t eliminate how hard it is to do this job. This job is really hard to do.”
Along with Sarah Strong and Paige Bueckers, Azzi Fudd was integral to this year’s tournament run. Fudd, who finished with 24 points, earned the Final Four Most Outstanding Player.
The Gamecocks kept it close in the first half. With 35 seconds left in the second quarter, a Maryam Dauda free throw cut South Carolina’s deficit to seven points. Momentum swayed, until UConn star Paige Bueckers found an open Ashlynn Shade for the 3-pointer with just nine seconds left. The Huskies struggled to make 3-pointers, only going 1-for-7 in the first half, but made the key one.
“The second quarter [shot], going into halftime, was a dagger,” South Carolina coach Dawn Staley said. “We had everything under control and we could have had it in single digits. When it gets to double digits, it’s hard to come back from a UConn team that is pretty great at executing their offense.”
With a 10-point lead at halftime, 36-26, there was no putting the foot on the brakes for UConn. The Huskies had a simple message at the half on what to do next. “[We just needed] to make sure to keep the pressure on, to keep doing what we were doing, because what we were doing was working,” guard Kaitlyn Chen said.
The pressure helped, but so did the crowd. In what felt like a flip of a switch, the second half of the sold-out Amalie Arena started to loudly favor the Huskies, giving UConn some of the needed momentum to seal the deal.
“I feel like [the fans have] been pretty consistent throughout no matter where we are,” Fudd said. “It feels like a home game. I hope all the fans just know how appreciative we are. We don’t take it for granted, like the fact they’ve traveled.”
The Huskies expanded their lead in the third quarter, thanks to an 11-point third quarter performance by Fudd, including a possession that saw Fudd stop South Carolina’s Tessa Johnson in her tracks on the fake-shot attempt by Fudd before an easy layup. The crowd fed into the energy Fudd was giving them and celebrated her for it.
And another one they made sure to also celebrate was Bueckers. She won her first national championship and went out on top. “Very validating to all the hard work we put in as individuals and as a team and how much we stuck together through the good times and the bad and how connected we were,” Bueckers said about what it meant to go out as a champion. “We’ve been through a lot on our own, as a team.”
Bueckers, whose 17-point performance ended her college career, struggled from the field, only shooting 35%. But she put her heart and soul on the floor to make sure that she and her team were champions and also Auriemma. “Just gratitude for all that Coach [Auriemma] has meant to me and how much he’s shaped me to the human I am, to the basketball player I am throughout this entire five years,” Bueckers said.
The bond Bueckers and Auriemma have is truly unbreakable. “My journey became hers in so many words,” Auriemma said. “Some conversations are light and fun and don’t mean anything. But today was the first one, I think, in five years that all the emotions that have been building inside of me came out. And they came out in here because in five years that she’s been at Connecticut I’ve never seen her cry. And she might deny it, but she cried because she’s going to miss me.”
Bueckers leaves UConn with several accolades, including the fastest Husky all-time to reach 2,000 career points and the third to ever reach 2,000-points, 500-rebounds, and 500-assists in her UConn career. But she leaves it in good hands.
Freshman Sarah Strong had a game-high 24-points and 15-rebounds on route to breaking the NCAA tournament record for the most single tournament points by a freshman with 114.
Fudd finished the championship game with a 24-point performance and was a key part of the success this team created this season. “We as coaches felt like Azzi was the key to this tournament,” said Auriemma. “We talked about it in the locker room before the game, just the coaching staff… We felt if she could have an Azzi-type game… that we would win.”
This team will go down in UConn history, there is just something about them. “What makes this team so special compared to what we’ve seen,” Chen said. “I think just how well we play together, like we really played as one unit. For the past six games, we were there for each other offensively, defensively, and it’s really hard to guard a team that really plays together like that.”
The question still looms if this will be the final season of Auriemma’s Hall of Fame career. But until that decision is made, the dynasty that UConn and Auriemma have built continues.
