MINNEAPOLIS — It had happened here before, at the Target Center, 27 years ago, for the UConn women’s basketball team.
UConn coach Geno Auriemma was the brash upstart going up against venerable Tennessee coach Pat Summitt, and UConn was looking for its first national championship.
Eleven titles and almost three decades later, here the Huskies were again Sunday night going against South Carolina for yet another national championship.
But this UConn team was not the dominant, unbeaten team of 1995 — and that team did not have the weight of expectations on it that every UConn team has now. This year, injuries and illness decimated the Huskies during the regular season, and just when they got everybody back together and were playing well in the Big East tournament, more injuries and illness struck in the NCAA Tournament.
So when South Carolina punched first, opening the game with a 13-2 run en route to a 64-49 victory in the NCAA championship game at the Target Center Sunday, the Huskies struggled to respond.
They did respond eventually, cutting an 18-point second-quarter lead to six with 1:30 to go in the third quarter, but that was as close as they could get, losing for the first time in a national championship game.
“I think it was a remarkable effort by them to stay together as well as they did throughout the entire year and to be in this game,” Auriemma said. “But once you get in this game, you want to win this game. You’re not just happy to be here. But I think when this wears off, I think they’ll appreciate the effort that it took to get here.”
UConn lost to Georgia Tech in early December after Paige Bueckers went out with a knee injury. The Huskies lost to Louisville in December, Oregon in January and Villanova in February. Bueckers missed 19 games after she had surgery for an anterior tibial plateau fracture and a lateral meniscus tear in her left knee suffered in the Dec. 5 win over Notre Dame.
Bueckers returned in late February and, despite breaking out and scoring 27 points in the regional final against NC State to get her team to the Final Four, she never really regained the form she had displayed before the injury. Against Stanford in the national semifinals, she was knocked down hard a few times but said she was fine before Sunday’s game.
“Just to play in the national championship, you’ve got to give your all, and whatever you have left you’ve just got to use it,” Bueckers said Sunday after the game. “However much I needed to play, however much I didn’t play, the minutes that I went out there I just wanted to give it my all.”
She finished the season leading the team in scoring (14.6 points per game) and had 14 points Sunday to lead the Huskies.
Azzi Fudd was out 11 games with a foot injury. Nika Mühl had a foot injury and missed games. Christyn Williams missed the loss to Oregon because of COVID-19 protocols. Aubrey Griffin had season-ending back surgery.
UConn regrouped and had everyone (except Griffin) back for the Big East Tournament. When the Huskies dominated Villanova, 70-40, for the conference tournament championship after losing to the Wildcats on Feb. 9, it looked like UConn was finally back.
But then Dorka Juhász broke a wrist in the double-OT win over NC State, and UConn lost depth in the post. The Huskies were able to survive against defending national champion Stanford, but their lack of depth inside hurt them against South Carolina and national player of the year and Final Four MVP Aliyah Boston. UConn was outrebounded 49-24, and the Gamecocks had almost as many offensive rebounds (21) as UConn had total rebounds. South Carolina had the edge in second-chance points (22-5) and went to the line 26 times, hitting 17 free throws while UConn was 1 of 4 from the free-throw line for the entire game.
On top of that, Auriemma said that Olivia Nelson-Ododa had a groin injury and Fudd didn’t feel well Sunday. Fudd didn’t make it to the shoot-around in the morning, but both played. Nelson-Ododa had four points and two rebounds. Fudd, who averaged 12.5 points, hit one 3-pointer.
Aaliyah Edwards played well inside defensively against the bigger Boston, but there was only so much she could do. She ended up with two rebounds and eight points. At one point late in the first half, Auriemma went way down his bench and subbed in rarely used freshman forward Amari DeBerry.
The guards struggled, too, as South Carolina’s defense disrupted the UConn offense from the start — Christyn Williams was 1 for 7 and had her first basket of the game with 1:54 left. Mühl, who played 17 minutes, hit one shot.
Overall, UConn did the best it could defensively with the personnel it had. South Carolina was averaging 71 points per game before Sunday.
“I just want to say UConn played an incredible game,” South Carolina coach Dawn Staley said. “They cut the lead to six, and they just kept fighting and fighting and fighting, and I thought our players were really resilient, and they didn’t want to lose this so close to being national champions. They did not want to lose this battle, so they kicked it into another gear to get it done.”
For the last week, the Huskies were riding a bit of a wave of invincibility — despite everything — and it crashed Sunday night. And South Carolina was ferociously good, both defensively and offensively.
“I’ve said this all along — you have to be really good, and you have to be a little bit lucky to win the national championship,” Auriemma said after the game. “You have to be really well-balanced, and you have to be all the things that South Carolina is. You have to have good guard play. Your big guys have to be able to dominate either at one end or the other. Then you need a little bit of luck.
“The 11 times that we won, I would say — maybe all 11 but at least 10, we had the better team. We played like we were the better team, and we were well-balanced and we had all the bases covered and we had everything that you needed to win a championship.
“We said when we got here, we’re going to need a little bit of help from Stanford on Friday night, and they didn’t shoot the ball like they normally do, and we were going to need a little bit of help [Sunday night], and [South Carolina] didn’t cooperate.”
