Guru’s WBB March Madness: Failed Buzzer-Beater Allows Stanford to Edge PAC-12 Rival Arizona 54-53 For First NCAA Title In 29 Seasons

By Mel Greenberg @womhoopsguru

SAN ANTONIO — In the end, the women’s basketball gods had 6.1 seconds to decide a combo cause-and-effect destiny Sunday night between overall top seed Stanford and three-seed Arizona, familiar PAC-12 rivals, that would determine the NCAA women’s basketball championship providing a joyful finish to a compelling saga for one and an agonizing result fpr the other.

The way the fates were set, Arizona, the longest lasting of the Cinderella forces in this Texas locale, had the ball and everyone in the Astrodome restricted crowd size knew the heroine’s role belonged to all-American Aari McDonald.

Drop the shot and the place would explode among the Wildcats faithful over the completion of an improbable journey to the top of the women’s basketball world.

Make the stop, which had already happened two days earlier in the national semifinals when successive attempts at the finish by South Carolina failed to drop, and the COVID-19 wandering journey of five months added to the 29-year pursuit of Stanford’s attempt to claim a closed gap between titles would have been achieved.

And of course in the balance was agony and ecstasy for each side.

As predicted the ball went to McDonald and she drove the basket from the top of the key with a crowd of three Cardinal defenders putting forth a wall. The ball went up and —- no.

Final score: 54-53 and Stanford had joined an elite group with its third NCAA crown, enabling long time coach Tara VanDerveer tie Baylor’s Kim Mulkey for third, exceeded just by two other Hall of Famers in the late Tennessee legend Pat Summitt with eight and the leader Geno Auriemma, whose bid by UConn to add to his 11 again failed for the fifth straight season Friday night at the hands of Arizona.

“I got denied hard,” said a tearful McDonald, the top scorer in the unique marathon three-week bubble environment here who had 22 more points in her last collegiate game. “I tried to turn the corner, they sent three at me. I took a tough contested shot and it didn’t fall.”

The only other double-digit scorer for the Wildcats (21-6) was reserve Shaina Fullington with 15 points.

As for the view and effort from the side of Stanford (31-2), which suffered just a two-game slide in mid-January to remove the Cardinal from the top of the Associated Press weekly women’s poll for the rest of the season, Haley Jones, voted the most outstanding player, said, “Oh, I had no idea (whether it would tickle the nets). I was just like, ‘Oh, please, God, don’t go in.

“We had like three people on her, They were suffocating her. She’s a great player. That had to be done. 

“We knew she would be the one taking the shot,” said Jones, who finished with 17 points and eight rebounds. “Honestly, you never know. She’s made some wild shots because she’s just that great. You hope it doesn’t go in.

“I didn’t really have an idea. When the buzzer went off, I didn’t realize what happened. 

“I think if you go back and watch, I kind of stood there for a second. It hadn’t clicked that we actually just won and the shot didn’t go in. I really had no thoughts. My mind was completely blank when she shot the ball. There’s three people there, that’s all you can do. It is not up to us any more at that point.”

The win extended VanDerveer’s record Division I women’s win total to 1,125, improving to six ahead of Connecticut’s Geno Auriemma, who became temporarily frozen at 1,119 with the semifinals loss.

Two other Stanford stars scored in double figures, Lexie Hull with a double double 10 rebounds and 10 losses, and Cameron Brink, with 10 points and three of the Cardinal’s five blocked shots.

Kianna Williams, who was playing in her hometown and venue she had played in high school, had five points and two rebounds, while Anna Wilson, the sister of NFL Seattle Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson, had four rebounds, while Ashten Prechtel grabbed eight.

Overall, the winners crashed the glass for a 47-29 edge in rebounding, 9-5 on the offensive glass to producing a wipeout of 11-0 in second chance points.

But Stanford committed 21 turnovers, many unforced, enabling Arizona to pull back into competition and also gain the last possession, though the Wildcats could have taken more advantage of the miscues than they did.

The outcome was the third straight in which the fates smiled on VanDerveer and her troops with a huge second-half comeback in the region title game against Louisville, the stop on South Carolina, and then Arizona, whom Stanford defeated easily twice during the regular season in PAC-12 play.

The tournament closed a two-year gap from Baylor’s 2019 title with the event cancelled a year ago at the outset of the pandemic.

“We’re excited to win the COVID championship,” VanDerveer said.

“One thing, I was really excited to have fans at our games. We have missed our fans so much.”

She conceded dodging Louisville, South Carolina, and Arizona in succession.

“We had some special karma going for us,” VanDerveer said. “Had the comeback against Louisville, dodge a bullet against South Carolina, dodge bullet against Arizona. Sometimes you have to be lucky. I’ll admit it, we were very fortunate to win.

 “If you got a faint heart or a weak stomach, then don’t coach.”

At the outset, Stanford got off to a fast 16-5 start but Arizona took advantage of the miscues to get back in it and each side took a run at the other with Arizona coming up with the ball on the last possession.

Stanford, having been forced to go away from campus in northern California to continue its season due to strict COVID-19 protocols from late November through mid-February, didn’t have to make as many adjustments as other schools in the 64-team field to exist in the setup by the NCAA, that did not have anyone during the period come up with a positive test.

The loss left a bit of sour taste to Arizona coach and alum Aida Barnes, one of two Black women in the Final Four with South Carolina’s Dawn Staley, a first in the 39-year history of the event. 

She was one shot away in a five-year building project from winning it all having previously won a WNIT title along the way.

Barnes also created a plug for working mothers having breast fed her relatively newborn in the locker room at halftime.

“Against great teams like Stanford we have to be a little bit bitter at the small things,” Barnes said. “It doesn’t ever come down to the last shot. It comes down to the missed free throws down the stretch, the foul on a three point shot, getting the turnovers and not converting. It’s those things. It’s never the last play. 

“But it obviously stings pretty bad,” she said.

“This team is so special. I am so proud. We fought. We weren’t the best team in the tournament. No one thought we’d be here. We believed in each other. We didn’t play a great game, but we battled. We played our hearts out. We came within one possession of wining a national championship.”

For the last play, Barnes said, “It was going to be Aari or nothing just because if you look at the game, really, Aari was the only one scoring. At that point we’ve been on Aari’s back for the whole tournament.

“She’s got to take the last shot. Unfortunately, it still had a chance going in. 

“But I have to put the ball in her hands in that situation because she’s one of the reasons why we are here,” Barnes said. “The reality with the season, one person is going to walk away happy with the season, and they’re national champions, everyone else us going to walk away disappointed. We got this close, so definitely disappointed. 

“We all wanted to hoist the trophy and make history.  It would have been almost next to a miracle for us to do that. 

“We had an opportunity to do that. That’s all I can ask for. So the bar is high. We want to come back here. 

“I’m trying to build as program like Tara has, build a program like Geno and Dawn, all the other trailblazers in this profession. I don’t want to come here once and be done. I want to be back here. I think in the future, Arizona will be back.”

Besides Stanford’s Jones as the most outstanding player, the all-tournament team for the Women’s Final Four included McDonald, Hull, South Carolina’s Zia Cooke, and Connecticut freshman Paige Bueckers.

Earlier in the day, Bueckers completed the consensus sweep, being the first person as a freshman with national player honors when the United States Basketball Writers Association announced her as their winner of the Ann Meyers Drysdale National Women’s Player of the Year honoree.

And that’s the report.