How South Carolina Beat UConn to Win the National Championship

MINNEAPOLIS – It was a 40-minute championship game, yes.

But if South Carolina set out on Sunday to show that an NCAA title could be won in the first four minutes of a competition, even against a strong, feisty, unyielding Connecticut, consider the pressure-tested and proven hypothesis on the sport’s biggest stage.

The gains of a rout would recede at certain moments, but the Gamecocks eventually beat the Huskies with 64-49 ease, claiming their second national title in their history.

On a night full of them, UConn’s main problem was that there was almost no time for a fight that never seemed so fair.

At the first timeout of the evening, even with 3.5 minutes left in the game, South Carolina had a 9-point lead and four starts. He had 7 second chances and 8 rebounds. UConn had a lone layup and didn’t have much to watch again but a block.

It was an early and emphatic capture of UConn’s always-always-raised victory in national championship games, an attack so striking and toned-down that the thicket of basketball fans inside Target Center could be forgiven for wondering if they were. He had paid generously to participate in a first-round tournament competition in Columbia, SC.

Instead, they saw South Carolina win their second championship in six seasons. Under Coach Dawn Staley, who took over at Columbia in 2008 and became the first coach to beat UConn’s Geno Auriemma in a national championship game on Sunday, the Gamecocks moved from a mid-level program to a marquee that has become the mainstay of the postseason. and a destination for soldiers as valuable as any place in the country.

And that was before the Minneapolis showcase on Sunday.

But South Carolina, unlike injury-prone UConn, was a cable favorite to reach the championship game and secure a title. The Gamecocks opened the season at #1 in an Associated Press poll, a point where they never gave up, with a roster of five returning players and 11 returning letter winners.

Aliyah Boston, a 6ft 5th junior forward from the United States Virgin Islands, was the highlight from the start, the only female hardwood juggernaut to have a career average double-double, and by the end of the season. Perhaps “the hardest person to protect in America,” as Auriemma put it in astonishment Saturday.

“If he has one, two, three, four people on him, he scores,” Auriemma said. “It doesn’t matter. He can carve any space he wants. He rims the ball whenever he wants. Whichever ball he goes after, he rebounds. He only has one talent.”

He also had talent around him. Zia Cooke, a junior guard, came to Minneapolis with three 20-point games this season. Brea Beal has proven to be one of the most menacing defenders in women’s basketball. Destanni Henderson was an extraordinarily fast veteran guard who was among the Southeast Conference’s assist leaders, and Victaria Saxton, a forward from Rome, Ga., took part in the off-court and slap shots.

They would have lost just twice before ravaging the NCAA tournament – 1 overtime in Missouri on December 30 and 2 in Kentucky in the SEC tournament championship game. Two days after every South Carolina player entered the game on Sunday to post double-digit scores in the Final Four against Louisville, the Gamecocks were averaging almost 70 points per game, keeping their opponents under 45 and dominating the off-table game. , plus a tournament rebound margin of -19.4 is best in the field.

They’ve also been exceptional at keeping their opponents in single digits every quarter. Entering Sunday’s game, Gamecocks had done it 39 times. Huskies were an unexpected victim for the 40th edition. But the Gamecocks were after the first game after shooting more than twice and collecting four times as many rebounds.

Six South Carolina players scored in the first game. UConn’s outstanding sophomore guard Paige Bueckers failed to score a point and the Huskies finished the quarter behind 14.

The Huskies offense boomed even more in the second second as UConn’s rebound recovered sharply and the Bueckers scored 9 points this period. Although Boston played most of the quarter, UConn kept him undefeated. The South Carolina advantage, whose overwhelming dominance and capitalization of the night’s second chance made possible, was reduced to 8 when intervened.

The Gamecocks would push their lead even further in the third round. But the game jammed sharply as South Carolina’s score entered an absolutely dry spell with no more than four minutes of a bucket.

But the Bueckers started a 10-point run for the Huskies with a jumper that was part of an overnight effort that included 14 points and 6 rebounds. The team’s second successful shot from behind the arc in 30 seconds reverberated as Connecticut had planted a flag in midfield as Evina Westbrook brought UConn’s lead to 6 with a 3-pointer.

But Henderson, who scored the first points of the night for South Carolina and easily led his team to Sunday’s score with a career-high 26 points, quickly pushed the lead back to 9 at the start of the last quarter. Henderson and Saxton soon used consecutive layups and free throws to re-establish a double-digit lead for the Gamecocks.

On Saturday, Henderson preached how South Carolina should simply “listen to our game plan and execute it.” He talked about how it could be “a great game, a great 40 minutes”.

For the Gamecocks, it was, except maybe for just 22 seconds in which they were tied in the beginning. After all this time, all Auriemma could do was stand on the sidelines, fold her arms.