MINNEAPOLIS — A lot appeared the identical Friday night time because it did 27 years in the past: Connecticut reaching the title sport of the N.C.A.A. girls’s match with a victory over Stanford on the Goal Heart.
That victory in 1995 gave the Huskies and Coach Geno Auriemma a possibility to play for his or her first championship. On Sunday night time towards South Carolina, UConn can win a twelfth nationwide title to cap a winding, irritating, injury-ridden common season that has led to the Huskies reclaiming what has turn out to be their customary place as a postseason powerhouse.
Auriemma stated this explicit victory, through which Paige Bueckers and her proficient teammates lasted simply lengthy sufficient to get previous the reigning champion Stanford, 63-58, was “100%” completely different from that way back defeat of the Cardinal.
“So a few years, we had the most effective group getting in and everyone knew it,” Auriemma stated. “This yr I didn’t assume any of that.”
He believed that the group wanted assist, for Stanford to not play its greatest. “By some unknown miracle, we’re taking part in Sunday night time,” he stated.
The loss ended a 24-game successful streak for the Cardinal, which had been the longest lively streak in Division I, and put the Huskies again within the championship sport for the primary time since 2016.
Bueckers, the sensational sophomore guard who grew up close to Minneapolis however missed 19 video games this season with a knee damage, led the Huskies with 14 factors, whilst she spent a while on the bench within the fourth quarter after taking successful to the legs. After the sport, she stated she was “OK.”
“I knew it was going to be a really aggressive, type of sluggish sport,” Bueckers added. “Each groups try to win a nationwide championship. It’s a Last 4 sport and everyone goes to put it on the road and that’s simply basketball.”
A UConn protection that strained Stanford from the beginning held the Cardinal to one in every of their lowest-scoring video games of the season, regardless of a late run that repeatedly turned the marathon right into a one-possession affair.
Neither group shot notably effectively. The Cardinal took extra 3-point photographs than the Huskies did and made fewer of them. Stanford’s scoring was led by Haley Jones, who had 20 factors and completed with a double-double due to her 11 rebounds.
“There have been some self-inflicted wounds in what we have been doing on the market, and it was disappointing,” stated Stanford coach Tara VanDerveer.
The primary half was the low-scoring slog most followers had anticipated of the sport performed earlier within the night between South Carolina, the match’s high general seed, and Louisville. The bodily tone between UConn and Stanford meant gamers spent extra time pleading with officers for calls and making an attempt to outmuscle one another than taking photographs — Stanford’s Lexie Hull even briefly got here out of the sport with a bloody nostril after taking a tough foul.
Neither group was even capable of hit double digits till the ultimate minute of the primary quarter, when Bueckers was capable of finding an open look to pull the Huskies to 10 factors. She was by far Connecticut’s greatest shooter early, to the delight of her hometown crowd.
Stanford started to collect a bit extra offensive drive within the second quarter. The splashiest offense in that interval, although, got here from UConn’s bench. Evina Westbrook, the redshirt senior guard who transferred from Tennessee when gamers nonetheless needed to sit out a yr, entered the sport and hit three much-needed photographs from behind the arc.
At halftime, the Huskies led by 1. The rating promised an uncommon final result for one group: UConn arrived in Minneapolis with a 25-1 document this season in video games it led after two quarters. Stanford was 6-1 after trailing on the half.
One of many sport’s most intense battles got here between the groups’ greatest publish gamers: Stanford’s Cameron Brink and Connecticut’s Olivia Nelson-Ododa. Brink pulled forward within the first half with only one foul and eight factors to Nelson-Ododa’s two fouls and nil factors.
However Brink picked up her third and fourth private fouls early within the sport’s remaining quarter, which despatched her to the bench and allowed Nelson-Ododa to pad UConn’s lead on the free throw line.
“She was extraordinarily bodily after we went to our publish participant,” VanDerveer stated of Nelson-Ododa. “We actually tried each timeout, each useless ball, to say ‘Get the ball inside.’ However it’s simpler stated than carried out.”
Stanford’s offense sputtered by means of a lot of the second half, at the very least by its requirements. The Cardinal struggled to maneuver the ball across the court docket, and their often glimmering 3-point capturing languished.
“We left rather a lot on the market unsaid,” Jones stated. “It’s laborious to swallow that capsule.”
However UConn was hardly proving explosive itself, and the Huskies solely held a one-possession lead heading into the ultimate quarter. The “Let’s go Huskies!” chants started to construct because the group strung collectively factors, and when Bueckers was ready get a steal and drive in for a layup that matched UConn’s largest lead with lower than six minutes to play, it felt like Stanford’s window was closing amid an extended scoring drought.
However the Cardinal repeatedly narrowed the margin to a single possession within the remaining minute, lastly seeming to seek out the offensive cohesion that eluded them for a lot of the sport. Late free throws by Christyn Williams and Azzi Fudd helped UConn to rebuild and protect its leads.
By then, South Carolina’s gamers had been watching, contemporary from their 72-59 rout of Louisville, with popcorn in hand to dimension up their opponents for Sunday night time.
Natalie Weiner reported from Minneapolis.
