Guru’s NCAAW Report: Dawn Staley’s South Carolina Gamecocks Doom Geno Auriemma’s UConn Perfection in National Title Games

By Mel Greenberg @womhoopsguru

MINNEAPOLIS, Mainn. _ The Philly Special returned here Sunday night not as a trick football scoring play in the Super Bowl but rather in the form of a battle in front of a sellout crowd  of 18,304 energized fans between two enormously successful collegiate women’s basketball coaches from the City of Brotherly Love.

And when the 40 minutes of action concluded here in the Target Center the tenacious defense of the South Carolina team on top of The Associated Press women’s rankings wire-to-wire was too much to handle in a 64-49 triumph depriving No. 5 Connecticut of extending its perfect run in NCAA title games to 12-0.

“The 11 times that we won, I would say — maybe all ll but at least 10, we had the better team,” said Norristown’s Geno Auriemma of the Huskies (30-6). “I told Dawn (Staley) after the game, they were the best team in the country all year.

“They were No. 1 in the country in November when we saw them down in the Bahamas (the Gamecocks trounced UConn 73-57), and they’re the best team in the country today.”

The game took place where UConn won its first NCAA crown in 1995, beating Tennessee a second time the same season for the national title with an unbeaten record.

Following a heartbreaking loss a year ago in the bubble configuration in the Alamodome in San Antonio, Texas, in the national semifinals on a Aliyah Boston missed shot against eventual champion Stanford, this time South Carolina’s 6-foot-5 junior scored 11 points and grabbed 16 rebounds with a pair of blocks to earn most outstanding player honors.

That came after spending the last several weeks picking up trophies as a consensus national player of the year.

The team of destiny for this season also was aided by Destinee Henderson, who scored a career-high 26 points, tops for both teams, and dealt four assists.

“I just found open gaps, and when they collapsed in the paint, Aliyah or whoever it was who was passing the ball just found me out on the perimeter, and I just let it fly,” Henderson said.

Staley, following South Carolina’s second NCAA crown and first since 2017 under her, called this edition the best of her era.

The title won by the Gamecocks (35-2) makes Staley, who guided the USA Olympic Squad to a gold medal in China last August, the first Black men’s or women’s coach to win two championships.

Social media was all agog over her Louis Vuitton varsity jacket.

“Our team had the fight of champions all season long,” Staley said during the presentation of the team trophy she danced with to the delight of the Gamecocks.  “We weren’t going to be denied — we were going to play every possession like it was our last possession. I know our players are super-exhausted, but they were determined to be champions today.”

Zia Cooke added 11 points to South Carolina’s attack.

The key to the win, as Auriemma noted, was the 49-24 differential in rebounding as well as the Gamecocks scoring 22 second-chance points.

Paige Bueckers, the Minneapolis hometown star here and national player of the year 12 months ago as a freshman, had 14 points for UConn. 

“Nobody in my position would be happy right now,” Bueckers said. “Super proud of this team for how far we’ve come and all the adversity we’ve dealt with and all we’ve dealt with  and all we’ve overcome to get to this point.

“But at UConn, it’s national championship or nothing, so obviously upset, frustrated, disappointed. Just wish things could have gone different for the seniors.”

A season that held great promise had a wakeup call early with the first Gamecocks rout quickly followed by Bueckers at the end of a win at home over Notre Dame in early December that sidelined her until late February.

Star freshman Azzi Fudd missed time and Saturday the flu bug caught up with her making her a non-factor.

“The first five minutes I thought they came out and set the tone right then and there for how the game was going to be played,” Auriemma said. “We were pretty much even the rest of the time, gave ourselves a chance, cut it to five, but we didn’t have enough.

“I’m proud of our guys just to get here, just to be in this situation; it’s just tonight we just didn’t have enough. They were too good for us.”

Citing the large collection of trophies by UConn, Staley refrained by labelling her squad a dynasty.

“I mean, UConn is not only a great team, they’re a great tradition,” Staley said. “They’re part of our women’s basketball history and you can’t really take that away from them.”

This season, the Gamecocks beat 14 ranked teams in the AP poll.

And in Staley’s short time first at Temple near her home in North Philadelphia compared to the longevity of other greats of the game, she quickly turned the Gamecocks into a force.

Staley, herself, is now 28th on the all-time list with 218 appearances and seventh on the active list pending the return of C. Vivian Stringer to active duty at Rutgers.

The Gamecocks are 12th on the all-time Top 5 list at 126, first on the current decade list at 44th. They are 15th on the all-time Top 10 list at 178 just two behind Old Dominion.

They are 20th on the total appearance list at 322 and as for being No. 1, the Gamecocks are sixth at 44th just behind the tie of Baylor and Texas at 47th. Then it’s a leap behind the domination of UConn at 250, Tennessee at 112, and Louisiana Tech at 83.

For UConn, eight of 12 players missed multiple games because of injuries and illness, primarily COVID.

It almost seemed the way the year went appropriate that the last big streak record, the 11-0 in this game, would fall, as did the long periods between losing to unranked teams, and the 169 straight conference wins until Villanova got them.

“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 then once you get in this game, you want to win this game. You’re not happy just to be here.

“But I think when this wears off, I think they’ll appreciate the effort it took to get here.”

That said, when asked to look 12 months from now when the tournament is played in Dallas, Auriemma said he expects to be back.

And that’s the blog with more to come.