By Mel Greenberg @womhoopsguru
MINNEAPOLIS, Minn. — It’s the number one team all season versus the number one team at being number one.
That’s your NCAA women’s basketball tournament championship final Sunday night at 8 p.m. on ESPN.
Philly teams may no longer be in contention heading into Sunday night’s closeout of the 2021-22 season but the matchup of top-ranked and number one overall seeded South Carolina versus No. 5 and second-seeded UConn here at the Target Center, home of the WNBA Minnesota Lynx whose Olympic coach Cheryl Reeve is a former La Salle star out of South Jersey, has set up a new meaning of Philly Special, the famed play several seasons ago in football that was key to the NFL Eagles winning their first Super Bowl.
And super is what this one is expected to be after the national semifinals Friday night saw South Carolina take down their 13th ranked team in another top seed in Louisville 72-59 followed by what seemed improbable several months ago and perhaps appropriately executed on April Fool’s Day as Connecticut short-circuited second-ranked and top seed Stanford’s rein as champions to one day less than a year with a grind out 63-58 twist and turned adventure whose outcome remained undetermined until the nightcap reached its final minute.
So second thing first in discussing the Huskies ending their championship game drought to five years after completing a unprecedented run of four consecutive seasons, a span also known as the Breanna Stewart era.
That triumph extended UConn’s record number of championships to 11, best-ever for men or women.
And then after Stewie graduated to be part of two WNBA title squads with the Seattle Storm and a pair of USA Basketball Olympic Gold Medalists in 2016 and a pandemic-delayed followup in 2021, instead of continued annual confetti tossed celebrations, the gateway to feel-good summers soured.
In 2017 it was Mississippi State ending the record run of 111 victories with a buzzer beater in overtime 66-64 that two days later led to Philly’s own basketball daughter Dawn Staley finally being an NCAA champion through her Gamecocks prevailing in a battle of Southeastern Conference rivals.
One year later, it was another Philly coaches clash, Big Five Hall of Famer and former Saint Joseph’s star Muffet McGraw at the helm of Notre Dame as the Irish on the way to their second title and first since 2001 repeat the Mississippi State style as Arike Ogubowale bopped the Huskies 91-89 in overtime at the buzzer and then beat the clock again one night later in dispatching Mississippi State 60-58.
In the 2019 semifinal it was Baylor rallying to put away the Huskies before becoming the champion when Ogwumike missed a free throw that would have sent the championship game into overtime.
The string of Final Fours seemed doomed in 2020 but the NCAA tournament was cancelled at the outset of the pandemic left UConn’s streak in tact.
Last year, in a controversial Elite Eight no-call toward the finish in a game with Baylor played in the bubble affair for the entire tournament in one place in San Antonio it was Arizona in its first semifinals handling the Huskies. That result created an all-Pac-12 final in which the Wildcats couldn’t connect at the finish leaving Stanford, which had played a major portion of its season away from home because of pandemic restrictions in Northern California.
Thus came this season, one which off the result of a high-power recruiting group led to great expectations.
But what is now full circle instead of the most dominant UConn run in the winter, the Huskies got decimated in the fourth quarter by South Carolina in a championship holiday tournament 1 vs 2 matchup final on Thanksgiving weekend in the tropics.
Soon thereafter it all quickly slipped off the rails.
Paige Bueckers, the reigning national player of the year off her freshman season, suffered a knee injury in the close of a lopsided win at home over Notre Dame in early December and was lost until a little over a month ago.
No. 1 freshman recruit Azzi Fudd was also lost for a large period and others missed time due to injuries and illness creating endings to long impressive streaks such as losing to unranked teams and Villanova in a Big East visit in Hartford snapping a Huskies conference win streak at 169.
But then players became healthy following the loss to Villanova and less than a week ago, UConn (30-5) kept its final four streak alive at 14 winning a thrilling double overtime game against top seed NC State in Bridgeport.
That set the stage for what became a low scoring affair here in the Target Center against the Cardinal (32-4) that in the fourth quarter turned the outcome in UConn’s direction.
“Points are hard to come by in this tournament —today was certainly no different,”Auriemma said. “You’re going to have to win some other way than thinking you’re just going to come out here and it’s going to be nicey-nicey, and they’re going to let you shoot whatever shot you want to shoot … We didn’t exactly play our A-game on the offensive end, but the things we needed to do when we had to do them, we came up big.
The game also featured Bueckers performing in her home town — win or go home she said last Monday night — “We won, and we’re still going home.”
Bueckers did not disappoint, scoring14 points against a squad that was No. 2 most of the season behind a South Carolina team that was allowed by the voters in the Associated Press media poll to stay number one, despite the Gamecocks’ two losses to unranked Southeastern Conference rivals — Missouri during the regular season and Kentucky in the SEC championship.
Until the Huskies began to inch ahead down the stretch it would be easy to cut the tension among the jammed crowd of 18,268 with a knife.
Going in, Stanford with a balanced offense highlighted by a backcourt guard tandem of Lexie Hull and Haley Jones along with forward Cameron Brink, and UConn with its inside/outside attack, the expectation was for a high scoring game.
But defense and struggles both ways led to a UConn lead of 12-9 after the first quarter among the two winningest Division I women’s coaches of all-time in Stanford’s Tara VanDerveer at 1,157 and Auriemma at 1,149 with a chance to move within seven when the title game tips at 8 Sunday night on ESPN.
In the second quarter the lead grew to 25-19 thanks to consecutive three-balls from Tennessee transfer Evina Westbrook with 2 minutes, 47 seconds remaining until the half.
Then Stanford asserted itself on a 7-0 run for a 26-25 edge with 1:20 left until halftime, which came with a recovered lead of 27-26.
The Cardinal offensive struggle continued in the third, shooting 4-of-12 from the field, though Jones reached a doubledouble at 12 points and 10 rebounds.
With 10 minutes left at the outset of the final quarter, the storylines were still yet to be set, 39-37.
Stanford was able to find life in the paint, though the score was close, and Brink had 12 points.
But UConn started gaining traction courtesy of Christyn Williams shot from deep for a 49-41 lead with 8:30 left, the largest separation at that moment.
“I knew it was going to be a very competitive, sort of sluggish game,”Bueckers said, being asked about the pressures of wanting to perform well with the home folks looking on. “It’s awesome that’s it’s awesome that its at my hometown, but that’s not really our team’s focus, my focus.
“We’re all just trying to win, and whatever we have to do to do it, I think we’re going to keep doing that.”
Stanford wouldn’t quit, however, and when Jones inserted a layup in the hoop, the Cardinal pulled within a basket 58-56 with 23 seconds left.
She finished with a game-high 20 points.
Unfortunately for Stanford’s situation, the Cardinal was forced to keep fouling and UConn answered by keep connecting on the line and Fudd got it back to a four-point spread to answer Jones.
“This is a really, really hard game to win —“ Auriemma said of the championship semifinal. “Stanford is the defending national champions and they have everybody back, and they’re not playing Sunday night.
“Sometimes you don’t have to have the best team to win this game, either. Sometimes you just have to play the best that night, and you have to make some big plays in big moments, and you do just enough with what you have.”
UConn is a perfect 11-11 in title games and is in the city the Huskies claimed their first crown in 1995, topping Tennessee with a late rally after beating Stanford in that semifinal.
Auriemma also addressed the luck factor — the opposing team not playing well.
VanDerveer added credence to that saying in her opening remarks, “We did not play our best game tonight.”
South Carolina Atones for Loss a Year Later Beating Louisville
Just 12 months later following a missed shot by Aliyah Boston in the national semifinal at the finish allowing Stanford to move on and beat Pac-12 rival Arizona, that too on a closing shot, to end the Cardinal’s title drought.
On Friday night, the Gamecocks’ quest to return and get to the title game was fulfilled, looking like the nation’s top team in beating Louisville 72-59 in the national semifinals opener at the Target Center before UConn and Stanford played for the right to oppose South Carolina (34-2).
Boston, the consensus national player of the year, had 23 points and 18 rebounds while dishing four assists.
Staley’s squad bolted to a 7-0 lead and at the end of the first quarter was holding it at 17-10.
The Cardinals (29-5) coached by Jeff Walz got back into it in the second quarter with a 6-0 run though Louisville star Hailey Van Lith didn’t get on the scoreboard till near the end of the half.
It got to within a bucket at 30-28 but Louisville fired up and was not going to let the Gamecocks get away.
Nice goal but Boston had other ideas and brushed aside the early threat passing out of a triple team to Brea Beal for a 34-28 advantage at the end of the half.
Staley said a timeout could have been called but “when you know why it’s happening and you’ve got an experienced team like we have, we just let the game settle in and we corrected it on the fly.”
The game kept getting more dominant and matters were not helpful to Louisville when Emily Engstler fouled out in the middle of the period.
Brea Beal had 12 points, a pair of blocks and and a pair of steals for the winners, while Destanni Henderson scored 11 with four assists, and Zia Cooke and Victaria Saxton each scored 12.
Before fouling out, Engstler had 18 points, nine rebounds, and 4 steals, Olivia Cochran and Kianna Smith each scored 14, while Van Lith was held to nine, shooting 4-for-11.
“This is the hump we needed to get over the hump,” Boston said. “And we got over that tonight, and we’re on to the national championship game. So really excited about that.”
Local Famers
Philadelphia is also expected to be represented Saturday when the new Basketball Hall of Fame is excited.
In a year that Immaculata’s first championship is being celebrated for its 50th anniversary of winning the first national championship its dominant star of the day Theresa Grentz, who later became a successful championship coach at Rutgers and Illinois, and had a brief turn at Lafayette, is expected to be part of the class. She was considered under the relatively new women’s veterans committee which deliberates on people considered to have gone through the cracks.
The committee’s choice goes directly into the hall.
Minnesota coach Lindsay Whalen, who was considered as a player for all-star WNBA status and playing on champion Minnesota Lynx WNBA champions as well as Olympic gold medal squads for USA, is on the local organizing committee here for the Final Four but has not been seen in town the past three days.
With just two exceptions the women have always been brought to the men’s Final Four for the announcement, which this year is in New Orleans.
The Athletic and several other sources have reported former UConn great Swin Cash to make it on her second year on the ballot, though former Immaculata star Marianne Stanley, considered as a coach with titles at Old Dominion, did not, nor did Leta Andrews, a high school coach in Texas.
And that’s your report.
