Since last year …
In last year’s Final Four, Connecticut beat UCLA 85-51 in the semifinals and finished off South Carolina 82-59 in the final.
The defending champion Huskies had to reload after No. 1 overall WNBA draft pick Paige Bueckers departed, along with Kaitlyn Chen and Aubrey Griffin. To give some idea of how deep that team was – Griffin averaged 11.1 minutes per game and played just three minutes in the final, but she was still taken in the WNBA draft. Connecticut had two players with 24 points each in the final, Azzi Fudd and Sarah Strong, and they’re both ready to run it back tonight.
South Carolina came into the tournament as the defending champions, having fended off Caitlin Clark’s Iowa team the year before. Like UConn, the Gamecocks had three players picked in the WNBA draft – Te-Hina Paopao, Sania Feagin and Bree Hall. MiLaysia Fulwiley transferred to LSU. Two senior transfers, Madina Okot (Mississippi State) and Ta’Niya Latson (Florida State), have joined senior Raven Johnson and junior Tessa Johnson in an experienced starting lineup in which the only younger player is second-team All-American sophomore Joyce Edwards.
Thanks, Ella and Stephanie, for making me cry. (I went to Duke. The Blue Devils came agonizingly close to a championship a few times, but they needed some rebuilding by the time Kara Lawson took over.)
Would anyone know anything about the University of Connecticut if they didn’t have the most dominant women’s basketball team of the past 30 years? What? They have a men’s team? I’m unfamiliar with that. I know Duke lost in the Elite Eight (same day at the women), but I think they lost to Southern California or Hofstra or Georgia or someone.
Back to the games at hand today – these teams’ presence in the Final Four is a surprise to exactly no one. They were all here last year. They were No. 1 seeds. Is it a good thing that women’s college basketball is so predictable? I asked that question recently.
But tonight, we have the potential for two fascinating games. If any teams can give UConn a game, it’s the three other teams in Phoenix.
Enjoy.
Beau will be here shortly. In the meantime, read Stephanie Kaloi’s piece on the word echoing throughout this year’s NCAA Tournament, through the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat.
Kara Lawson’s Duke team saw their Final Four dreams dashed with a 70-58 loss to UCLA on Sunday. The Blue Devils had pulled an impressive, buzzer-beating upset of No 2 seed LSU in the Sweet 16 days before, but against the No 1 Bruins in the Elite Eight, they didn’t give a repeat performance. They missed a few key moments in transition that could have changed the game and helped them to their first Final Four in 20 years.
In the end, though, it was OK.
“I told the group after the game, just before we came up here, what a great season it’s been for us. And this group has been a joy to coach every day,” Lawson told reporters after the game. Duke lost six of their 13 games played between 3 November and 28 December, and many had written off the team before they even had a chance to get into a groove.
“From where we started to where we finished, I don’t know that there’s a team that grew more than we did in the country, from where we started to where we finished,” Lawson added. “That is all because of our players, their belief, their faith and their trust in each other and our staff. That’s hard to find. That’s rare.”
Suffering a big loss that simultaneously ends a team’s March Madness hopes isn’t easy to swallow, and summoning joy from that experience isn’t for the weak. But over and over again, that’s what players and coaches have done so far during this tournament cycle. While there’s been plenty of emphasis on what went wrong and how it can be fixed before next season, there’s also been an intentional focus on what went right, too.
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