Good morning. I’m Josh Rosenblat, who teamed up with Dan Gartland for this edition of SI:AM.
If you’re reading this on SI.com, you can sign up to get this free newsletter in your inbox each weekday at SI.com/newsletters.
South Carolina went out and proved it
It looked like a mismatch from the jump. Top-seeded South Carolina, the country’s No. 1 team all season, claimed its second national title in program history last night with a 64–49 win over UConn.
Dawn Staley’s squad dominated the opening quarter before the Huskies pulled the game back into reach before halftime. But UConn couldn’t find any answers for the Gamecocks, especially on the offensive glass, where they collected 21 boards.
“I thought they came out and set the tone right then and there for how the game was going to be played,” Huskies coach Geno Auriemma said following the game.
Aliyah Boston collected another double double, capping off a season in which she won the Naismith player and defensive player of the season awards and was named the Most Outstanding Player for this year’s NCAA tournament. In this game, though, South Carolina was led by guard Destanni Henderson, who poured in a career-high 26 points.
The aftermath of the title game leaves UConn searching for answers about how to get back to its title-winning ways. And to do that, it’ll now have to go through a landscape that sees Staley’s program firmly established at the top of the sport.
But we’ll leave most of the big-picture takes for the coming days and weeks. For now, Staley’s program avenged a heartbreaking Final Four loss from a season ago with a wire-to-wire, title-winning campaign.
“This journey of being a coach has been truly gratifying. I have to reflect on this part of it. Like it comes with a great deal of pressure, pressure because we were the No. 1 team in the country throughout the entire season, pressure to come into the NCAA tournament and be the favorites, by most people if not all,” Staley said.
In today’s Daily Cover story, SI’s Emma Baccellieri details all that went into South Carolina’s title run. The key difference between this one and the program’s first championship in 2017: culture. “I learned that culture matters,” Staley said. “I learned that chemistry matters.”
Staley has instilled that culture by being as straightforward as possible, Baccellieri writes:
“As for how Staley made sure players knew what that looked like? Simple: She just told them. To be anything less than completely honest with her players, in her eyes, would be to fail them. ‘I deal with young people’s goals and dreams,’ she says. ‘I don’t take that lightly, so I just tell them how it is.’ That means going straight to the point: Here’s what you have to do for us, here’s why it’s important, and here’s how to make it work.”
Key matchups to watch in UNC-Kansas
Tonight’s men’s title game in New Orleans (9:20 p.m. ET, TBS) is the culmination of a wild March. Kansas got hot in its win over Villanova while North Carolina won a thriller over Duke to get to this point. Adding another national championship to either program’s storied history will take a huge effort and, likely, earning an advantage in key matchups, according to SI’s Kevin Sweeney.
Leaky Black vs. Ochai Agbaji
- Black is UNC’s best wing defender, and he shut down Duke’s best perimeter shooter, AJ Griffin, in the semifinals.
- Agbaji is a more well-rounded scorer than Griffin, evidenced by his uber-efficient 21 points on just eight shots against Villanova.
- Black will be tasked with trying to contain the Big 12 player of the year. And, if he can, it’ll go a long way in slowing down the Jayhawks’ red-hot offense.
Offensive glass
- One of the key ingredients to North Carolina’s upset of Duke (and South Carolina’s dominant performance in the women’s title game) was its advantage on the offensive glass.
- Armando Bacot had eight of those by himself and he’ll go up against Kansas big man David McCormack, “who almost single-handedly makes KU one of the better offensive rebounding teams in the country,” Sweeney writes. The center’s improvement over his career was on display in Saturday’s win.
- If this one comes down to the wire, those extra possessions could make the difference.
Bill Self vs. Hubert Davis
- In six weeks, first-year coach Hubert Davis has guided UNC from a bubble team to the precipice of a national championship.
- Kansas coach Bill Self has taken notice, but comes into this title game with far more experience coaching at this particular stage.
- How the coaches manage their rotations will be interesting. Both teams like to get up and down the floor, but the Jayhawks do that with a deep, veteran roster. In contrast, Davis gives his starters heavy run. Against Duke, all five played at least 33 minutes.
Sweeney goes into detail on more matchups that could determine this contest. You can read about them all here.
The best of Sports Illustrated
UNC’s dramatic win over Duke put an end to Mike Krzyzewski’s storied career. SI’s Pat Forde detailed the scenes during and after the game in which Coach K’s clock finally ran out:
“The last Duke shot had caromed off the rim, the rebound cradled by North Carolina. It was, suddenly and swiftly, over. As the Tar Heels launched into celebratory orbit, bounding all over the Caesars Superdome court, Mike Krzyzewski folded his arms across his chest and waited for the final horn to signal the end of his life’s work.”
Don’t feel too bad for Duke, though. With Jon Scheyer taking over, the Devils are poised to be at the top of the game for a while longer. Just look at the talent he has coming in Year 1, writes SI’s Jason Jordan.
Even with college hoops nearly done, we’ve got some big things coming up on the sports calendar (both in the short and long term):
- The Masters is this week. And Tiger Woods is on property. He called himself a “game-time decision” to play. The Morning Read’s Bob Harig has the details.
- The NFL Draft is later this month. Here’s Kevin Hanson’s latest two-round mock, which features major trades that shake up the order.
The 2022 World Cup is in a little over seven months. But the USMNT now knows its group, which features England. SI’s Brian Straus calls it the “Group of Great Intrigue.”
Around the Sports World
The big takeaways from WrestleMania 38 include notes on “Stone Cold” Steve Austin and Logan Paul. … Former South Carolina star A’ja Wilson was in Minneapolis celebrating her alma mater’s win. … Kareem Abdul-Jabbar says LeBron James “should be embarrassed about” some things he’s done. … You can watch Coach K’s emotional postgame interview. … On Friday, the Dodgers and White Sox pulled off a trade that could really help both clubs. … Ben Simmons wants back nearly $20 million that was withheld from him by the 76ers, according to ESPN.
The top five...
… moments from WrestleMania 38:
5. Jackass star Wee Man bodyslamming Sami Zayn
4. Vince McMahon’s all-time terrible sell of the Stone Cold Stunner
3. Pat McAfee’s impressive in-ring work in his match against Austin Theory
2. Cody Rhodes’s return to WWE after being gone for six years and helping to start the company’s primary competitor
1. Steve Austin’s surprisingly physical match against Kevin Owens—his first in 19 years
SIQ
On this day in 1974, Henry Aaron tied Babe Ruth by hitting the 714th home run of his career. Which city did the record-tying homer come in?
Friday’s SIQ: Which team traded Lou Piniella to the Royals at the end of spring training in 1969?
Answer: The Seattle Pilots. Piniella was selected by the Pilots in the October 1968 expansion draft, but they traded him to the American League’s other new expansion team before the season began.
Piniella had been struggling to earn his shot in the majors before the trade, bouncing from team to team and level to level. He was first signed as an 18-year-old by Cleveland in 1962 and then selected in the first-year draft immediately following his first pro season by the Washington Senators, which turned around and traded him in the middle of the ’64 season to the Orioles. It was in Baltimore that Piniella made his big league debut, getting one plate appearance in four games before going back to the minors. Before the ’66 season, the Orioles traded him back to Cleveland. He hit well at Triple A Portland but didn’t get called back up to the majors until the end of the ’68 season.
At that point, Piniella was pretty fed up with baseball and was hoping to get selected by Seattle or Kansas City in the expansion draft so he could have a fresh start, according to a 2019 Lookout Landing article. But upon arriving at spring training, Piniella looked around and saw a lot of other right-handed bats. He wasn’t getting much playing time and wasn’t optimistic about making the team. But the Pilots had spent $175,000 ($1.4 million today) to select him in the expansion draft, so they weren’t going to just cut him, and stashing him in the minors for that price didn’t seem worth the cost. Instead, they traded him to the Royals for pitcher John Gelnar (who had a good 1969 season for Seattle) and an outfielder from Tacoma named Steve Whitaker, who played only two more seasons in the majors.
The fresh start proved to be just what Piniella needed. He won the 1969 AL Rookie of the Year, five years after his big league debut, and went on to play until he was 40 before becoming a successful manager.
From the Vault: April 4, 2005
Walter Iooss Jr./Sports Illustrated
In the wake of the epic 2003 ALCS and even more epic 2004 ALCS, it would have been silly to put somebody other than the Yankees and Red Sox on the cover of SI’s 2005 MLB preview issue.
The New York–Boston rivalry has always been baseball’s fiercest, and it was hotter in the first few years of the new millennium than it has been since. First Aaron Boone hit an 11th-inning walk-off home run in Game 7 of the 2003 series to send the Yankees to the World Series, then Boston came back from a 3–0 deficit in ’04 on the way to winning its first championship since 1918.
As part of that year’s baseball preview, Tom Verducci ranked baseball’s 20 greatest rivalries and put Yankees–Red Sox first on the list:
“The fans don’t like each other, the players don’t like each other—this spring Trot Nixon called out Alex Rodriguez as a “clown”—and the owners don’t like each other. They've met 52 times over the past two seasons, including two seven-game ALCS epics. (Boston holds a 27–25 lead.) Anybody up for 26 more this year?”
The magazine’s editors were also pulling for another York playoff showdown (they picked the Yankees to beat the Red Sox in the ALCS on their way to a World Series title), but fans had to settle for the 19 regular-season games between the two sides.
That season series was a thrilling one, though. Entering the final weekend, the Yankees were 9–7 against Boston. If the Red Sox could sweep their rivals at Fenway, they would win the division. But New York won the middle game of the series, which meant, even though both teams finished with identical 95–67 records, the Yankees claimed the division crown by virtue of having won the regular season series, 10–9.
Unfortunately, fans were denied a third consecutive ALCS matchup between the two rivals when both teams were knocked out in the ALDS. The Yankees lost three games to two to the Angels, and the Red Sox were swept by the eventual champion White Sox.
SI wasn’t high on the White Sox that year. The magazine ranked them as the 17th-best team in baseball and picked them to finish third in the AL Central. They wound up winning an AL-best 99 games behind one of the league’s best pitching staffs and cruised through the playoffs, losing just a single postseason game.
Check out more of SI’s archives and historic images at vault.si.com.
