WBB: Huskies Rebound In Final Four, Return To National Title Game
MINNEAPOLIS-Paige Bueckers’ return to her home state of Minnesota coincided with a program-centric homecoming for her University of Connecticut Huskies.
UConn (30-5) put on a rebounding and defensive showcase in the latter half of Target Center’s NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament Final Four doubleheader on Friday night, getting by the Stanford Cardinal by a 63-58 final. With the win, the Huskies are moving on to the tournament’s championship finale on Sunday night, where they’ll battle the South Carolina Gamecocks (8 p.m. ET, ESPN). It’ll be the Huskies’ 12th appearance in the final game, having won each of their prior appearances (their last coming in 2016).
A gritty battle landed in the Huskies’ favor, one that saw four UConn representatives haul in at least six rebounds. Olivia Nelson-Ododa led the way with 10 while fellow starter Aaliyah Edwards had eight more to lead the way, with half of their combined total of 18 coming on the offensive end. Nika Muhl and Evina Wesbrook united to grab a combined 14 off the bench, while Bueckers, an Edina, MN native, led the Connecticut scoring effort with 14 points on 7-of-13 shooting.
“We said the other day that points are hard to come by in this tournament. Today was certainly no different,” UConn head coach Geno Auriemma said in the aftermath. “You're going to have to win some other way than thinking you're just going to come out here and it's going to be nicey nicey and they're going to let you shoot whatever shot you want to shoot. And same with them, we're going to guard them, they're going to guard us and you've just got to tough it out, you've got to rebound the ball better, you've got to play defense better, you've got to get every loose ball, you've got to make your free throws.”
“We didn't exactly play our A game on the offensive end, but the things we needed to do when we had to do them, we came up big. I don't know what more I can say about this group than we've been saying, but it was pretty remarkable.”
For Buckers, a supposed homecourt advantage at the site of her high school championship endeavors meant nothing, her focus centered only on avening the disappointing national semifinal loss that capped off her illustrious freshman campaign.
“I knew it was going to be a very competitive sort of sluggish game. Both teams are trying to win a National Championship. It's a Final Four game and everybody is going to lay it on the line and that's just basketball. It doesn't really matter the location and where we're playing,” the sophomore said. “We're just trying to win and we're just trying to keep playing with this team. It's awesome that it's in my hometown, but that's not really our focus, our team's focus, my focus.
We're all just trying to win, and whatever we have to do to do it, I think we're going to keep doing that.”
Defensively, the Huskies limited the defending champion Cardinal (32-5) to 35 percent shooting from the field, which included a 2-of-12 output from Lexie Hull, who entered as the tournament’s leading scorer. Haley Jones led the way for Stanford with a 20-point, 11-rebound double-double.
It was clear from the get-go that defense would win a ticket to the championship, with UConn holding a mere 12-9 lead after the opening 10 minutes. The Huskies’ efforts to pull away were hampered by early struggles from seniors Nelson-Ododa and Christyn Williams. Westbrook picked up the fourth-years’ slack with a three-triple showing in the second quarter that kept the pursuing Cardinal at bay. Nelson-Ododa’s foul trouble also complicated the cause, as it was well known that Dorka Juhasz would be unavailable after sustaining a wrist injury in the prior week’s regional final victory over North Carolina State.
But the Huskies continued to enjoy the sizable contributions of Muhl, the Croatian-born sophomore who has lived up to her billing as the Big East’s Defensive Player of the Year throughout the tournament. This time, Muhl’s impact was present in the more conventional areas of the box score, giving the Huskies a steady lead and tearing the Cardinal away from precious second chances.
A Muhl act led to the game’s permanent momentum shift, one that also restored the seniors’ confidence for the stretch run. Her steal from Kiki Iriafen led to an and-one opportunity for Nelson-Ododa, kickstarting a 10-4 run over the first half of the final that allowed UConn’s to build the largest lead of the game at eight. Though capped off by a Bueckers steal and fastbreak lay-up, Nelson-Ododa was responsible for half the points in that trip while Williams also sank a crucial three that countered a contested Haley Jones jumper that put the UConn lead at a possession. Stanford threatened from there on out, but the early fourth quarter antics proved to be sustainable.
Auriemma praised the work of his seniors for rising up in the face of early adversity. ‘
“I thought Liv and Christyn really struggled that whole first half. You really can't come here as a senior and hope that somebody else wins it for you. That's what you do when you're a freshman sometimes,” Auriemma said, noting that Westbrook understood such a concept right from the get-go. “They could have come back in and just played worse, but to their credit, they did exactly what I expect them to do every night. I hope they got one more night in them.”
“Our seniors are just doing it all,” Muhl said. “They just want to win, and we're there to follow them. We're listening to them. They're leading us in a great way, and we have one more game, and I'm sure they're going to lead us to that, too.”
A delayed rematch now awaits the Huskies in the championship finale, as they’ll square off against a South Carolina group that punched its own championship ticket with a 72-59 win over
fellow top-seed Louisville in Minneapolis’ Friday opener. The Gamecocks (34-2) are seeking their second national title after triumphing in 2017 and have maintained domination through the efforts of recently crowned Naismith Coach of the Year Dawn Staley (her second in the last three seasons) and junior Aliyah Boston, the holder of numerous Player of the Year Awards, including the Naismith Society’s Player of the Year and Defensive trophies.
The two sides previously met in another championship match, that of the inaugural women’s edition of the Battle 4 Atlantis Tournament in the Bahamas in November. Behind a 22-point, 15-rebound outing from Boston, the Gamecocks rolled to a 73-57 triumph, one sustained by a 16-3 advantage in the fourth quarter. Another get-together was slated for February in Columbia but was canceled due to scheduling complications brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Auriemma said the early key to another championship trophy hoist was to make sure that the only opponent was South Carolina…and not the Huskies themselves.
“This is a really, really hard game to win. Stanford is the defending national champions and they have everybody back and they're not playing Sunday night. It's a hard game to win,” Auriemma said. “Sometimes you just got to make something out of very little, and with all the things that happened this year…We make it so hard on ourselves that we make it twice as hard as it already is. And hopefully Monday we can just worry about beating South Carolina and not beat ourselves as much. They're going to be impossible to beat just as it is.”
Geoff Magliocchetti is on Twitter @GeoffJMags
