The dynasty continues after a nine-year hiatus and Paige is ending her college career on top.
Paige Bueckers and the UConn Huskies cruised to yet another dominant 82-59 win over the South Carolina Gamecocks at Amalie Arena in Tampa, Florida, on Sunday afternoon to win the national championship. It marks the team’s 12th title in program history, and the first since 2016. They are now the first Division I team with a dozen championships, all of which have come under head coach Geno Auriemma, surpassing UCLA’s eleven on the men’s side.
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.”
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.
The win capped what has been a truly dominant run for the Huskies throughout the women’s NCAA tournament this spring. While Bueckers has out in the work and recorded multiple 30-point games, it was Azzi Fudd and freshman Sarah Strong who repeatedly stepped up in the big moments to round out a trio that nobody else in the 68-team field was able to contain or stop.
They won every single game by double figures and defeated three No. 1 seeds, including a 34-point rout over top-seeded UCLA Bruins in the Final Four on Friday, to win their title. Bueckers, who is expected to be the No. 1 overall pick in the WNBA Draft next Monday, now turns pro with a championship. She had led UConn to four Final Four appearances, but they fell to South Carolina in the national championship game in 2022.
South Carolina came out and got off to a fast start but completely fell apart at the seams at the end of the first quarter. After opening the game, making five of their first seven shots, the Gamecocks bricked seven of their next eight to end the quarter. They did not score at all after Joyce Edwards hit a free throw at the 3:59 mark either. That allowed UConn to jump up by five at the first break.
Though UConn went into the locker room at halftime with just one made 3-pointer, which Ashlynn Shade drilled right before the buzzer, the Huskies still doubled their lead after the second quarter, 36-26. They held South Carolina to just 12 points in the second quarter and held them to a single field goal in the final five minutes of the period. Strong nearly had a double-double in the first 20 minutes with eight points and 11 boards, too. It was the highest rebounding total in a single half of a national championship game since Tina Charles in 2009.
Embed from Getty ImagesUConn then took off in the third quarter, thanks in part to an 11-point stretch from Fudd. She hit a huge 3-pointer late in the period, which Sarah Strong followed up quickly with one of her own, to help push them to a 20-point lead after the period. They closed out the quarter on a 12-3 run, which gave them their largest lead of the game at that juncture.
The fourth quarter was much of the same and just put the icing on the cake. The Huskies cruised to the 23-point blowout without any setbacks after opening the last period on an 18-6 run.
An emotional Bueckers, likely to be the No. 1 pick in the WNBA Draft, walked off the court with 1:32 left. After being subbed off she approached coach Auriemma, with both exchanging long embraces near the scorer’s table.
“He told me he loved me, and I told him I hated him,” Bueckers said about the moment. “I love that man more than words can describe.”
“You just never know if you’ll ever be back in the situation again,” an emotional Auriemma told the ESPN broadcast after the game.
“There were so many times when I think we all questioned like have we been here too long? Has it been time? And yet we kept hanging in there and hanging in there and it’s because the players make me want to hang in there every day.
“This team has changed so much from the beginning of the season. If people only knew we had a preseason scrimmage, we lost the scrimmage. I thought we wouldn’t make the NCAA tournament,” he added.
“This is I mean, they all been gratifying. Don’t get me wrong. But this one here, because of the way it came about and what’s been involved – it’s been a long time since I’ve been that emotional when a player has walked off the court.”
Bueckers, Fudd and Strong combined for 65 total points in the win, which marked yet another massive outing for the group. Bueckers finished with 17 points, which moved her past the Hall of Famer Maya Moore for the third-most career points in the NCAA tournament. Fudd had 24 points and was named the Final Four’s Most Outstanding Player.
Strong finished with a solid double-double, with 24 points and 15 rebounds. Strong set an NCAA tournament record for points by a freshman in a single tournament, as well, and she is the third freshman in history to drop 20 points in both a semifinal and national title game.
Edwards and Tessa Johnson each had 10 points off the bench to lead South Carolina in the loss, though they were the only two Gamecocks players to reach double figures. Chloe Kitts finished with nine points and six rebounds, and Sania Feagin finished with eight points. They shot a pedestrian 21-of-61 from the field as a team and just 4-of-16 from 3-point range.
While South Carolina failed to defend last year’s championship against the Iowa Hawkeyes, the Gamecocks’ remarkable run is still very much intact. They have made five consecutive Final Four appearances, three of the last four national championship games and won two national titles. But, with how extraordinary Bueckers and the Huskies were playing late in the season, there was simply no stopping them.
Bueckers was leaving No. 1.
