WBB’s resilient championship run ends vs. South Carolina
MINNEAPOLIS-The University of Connecticut’s women’s basketball team had to play resiliently all season. Forty more minutes were hardly an issue.
Alas for Connecticut, the Huskies’ final display of endurance in the face of adversity fell one step short of a 12th national championship. Such fortitude wasn’t enough to stop the University of South Carolina’s wire-to-wire run at the top of the rankings, as the top-seeded Gamecocks earned a 64-49 victory in championship finale of the 2022 NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament at Target Center on Sunday night. Paige Bueckers topped the Huskies (30-6) with 14 points and six rebounds in defeat, the program’s first runner-up efforts in the championship game in 12 appearances.
“Nobody in my position would be happy right now, so I'm obviously upset just with the way things ended,” Bueckers said in defeat. “(I’m) super proud of this team for how far we've come and all the adversity we've dealt with and all we've overcome to get to this point. But at UConn, it's National Championship or nothing, so (we’re) obviously upset, frustrated, disappointed. Just wish things could have gone different for the seniors.”
To beat the Huskies, newly-crowned two-time champion South Carolina (35-2) essentially became the Huskies, building an early, sustainable lead through domination of the rebounding battle. The Gamecocks’ 12-3 advantage on the boards in the first quarter was the key ingredient behind a 22-8 score at the end of the first quarter, with nine of those points coming from second chance opportunities earned through seven rebounds of the offensive variety.
Though UConn recovered to win the second quarter, with nine Bueckers points helping trim the halftime deficit to eight, they never came closer than six points away from tying the rest of the way.
“I think (South Carolina) deserved it 100 percent. They were the best team all year,” head coach Geno Auriemma said of the Gamecocks’ opening onslaught. “The first five minutes I thought they came out and set the tone right then and there for how the game was going to be played. We were pretty much even the rest of the time, gave ourselves a chance, cut it to five, but we just didn't have enough. I'm proud of our guys just to get here, just to be in this situation, it's just tonight we just didn't have enough. They were just too good for us.”
Destanni Henderson earned a career-best 26 points in her collegiate finale for the Gamecocks, who also enjoyed an 11-point, 16-rebound double-double from newly crowned Naismith Player of the Year Aliyah Boston. South Carolina’s final rebounding advantage clocked in at 49-24, earning 22 second chance points after hauling in 21 offensive boards in total. Sunday marked South Carolina’s second win over the Huskies this season, previously earning a 16-point
decision in another championship finale at the Battle 4 Atlantis tournament in the Bahamas back in November.
UConn’s underclassmen undoubtedly improved since that 73-57 loss. But South Carolina’s stars likewise boosted their games, more than earning the right to become the 12th team in NCAA women’s basketball history to sit at the top of the Associated Press’ rankings for an entire season en route to a national title.
“I told (South Carolina head coach Dawn Staley) after the game, they were the best team in the country all year. They were No. 1 in the country in November when we saw them down in the Bahamas, and they're the best team in the country today,” Auriemma said. “When you're dealing with that all year long, it's not the easiest thing in the world. So I think her and her staff, they did a magnificent job managing all that and all the expectations that go with that.”
“We knew South Carolina is a very physical team. They rebound the ball extremely well. They defend really well, pressure really well,” Beuckers said of the Gamecocks. “We just tried to make sure that we were back door cutting and started relieving all the pressure on offense, and just making sure the battle of the boards, nothing comes easy for them. We wanted to box out really well, push the ball in transition to get them running, get them tired. But South Carolina is a great team, they had a great game, and congratulations to them.”
In perhaps a grimly appropriate ending to a season beset by medical calamities, the Huskies were once again forced to deal with opponents beyond their control: it was already well-known that Dorka Juhasz would be unavailable to a wrist fracture sustained in the Bridgeport Regional final win over North Carolina State, though freshman Caroline Ducharme (9 points on 4-of-8 shooting before fouling in the fourth quarter) performed serviceably well in interior relief. Freshman breakout Azzi Fudd was limited to 16 minutes (her lowest since playing 10 in the aforementioned first tilt with the Gamecocks) and three shots from the field while dealing with an illness that forced her away from the pregame shootaround.
Ducharme and senior Evina Westbrook came off the bench to provide a spark in the second quarter, with the latter pulling in three rebounds before she too had to play somewhat hobbled with an ankle injury sustained just prior to halftime. The sense of relative calm Westbrook was able to bring was an appropriate parting gift in the “team mom’s” collegiate finale. Despite the runner-up finish, Westbrook declared that her decision to spurn the 2021 WNBA Draft was well worth it.
“Definitely not the outcome that we wanted, but I think it was definitely over worth it for me coming back and just being with this group of girls and making the memories that we did,” Westbrook said. “We win together, we lose together, so this definitely hurts, but a lot of memories, a lot of great memories made with this group…I rolled my ankle, but I wasn't really thinking about it. I know I was limping a little bit, but it was the last game of the season, so whether I rolled it, broke it, I was going to try to play regardless.”
Auriemma concurred, praising his team for their resilience and strength in a season that featured several would-be game changing disasters, headlined by the combined 30 games lost between Bueckers and Fudd. Though several streaks, including Auriemma’s perfect 11-0 mark in the national title game, were lost, UConn was still able to return to the early April finale, taking down two No. 1 seeds in the process (NC State and defending champion Stanford).
“For them to…be in this game was quite an achievement. If you'd have said in November when we left the Bahamas that we would be playing South Carolina tonight, maybe everybody would have said that could possibly happen very easily, right?” Auriemma said. “The way it went, I guess if you weren't there, if you didn't see it, if you didn't feel it every day in practice or just who can't go, who can go, it was just a credit to them that they were able to hold it together for that long. We certainly had our ups and downs. The best way I can say it is I'm really proud of them. But tonight we just weren't good enough. We just weren't good enough.”
“They're competitors. They want to compete. It's easy to compete when you're winning. It's easy to compete when everything is going well. But it's something else when it's a struggle. Everything was a struggle tonight. Everything was a struggle,” the head coach continued. “But that's what competition is, right? That's what's at the heart of competing, that you compete even when the chances of winning are slim, when nothing is going your way and you still compete. Otherwise you shouldn't call yourself a competitor.”
“We've got some competitive kids on our team that, again, we wouldn't be here if they weren't. Today was another example of how competitive they are.”
Geoff Magliocchetti is on Twitter @GeoffJMags
