UConn-South Carolina title tilt packs plenty of star power

MINNEAPOLIS — The South Carolina Gamecocks held the highest spot within the Related Press High 25 ladies’s ballot all season about as tightly as they play protection each evening.

The final check for the No. 1 total seed on this 12 months’s NCAA Event would be the Connecticut Huskies, who produced a lockdown defensive efficiency of their very own towards Stanford to succeed in the nationwide championship.

Aliyah Boston displaying who’s the boss within the paint, and Paige Bueckers slithering across the perimeter. Daybreak Staley on one bench, and Geno Auriemma on the opposite. South towards North.

Ladies’s faculty basketball will get the greats of the sport collectively on the largest stage as constantly as any sport, and this South Carolina-UConn matchup might be no totally different.

The Gamecocks (34-2) toppled Louisville 72-59 within the first semifinal at Goal Middle on Friday evening, behind 23 factors and 18 rebounds from Boston, the newly minted AP Participant of the 12 months.

“With the awards, I’m actually blessed, however my foremost focus is bringing house a nationwide championship,” Boston stated. “I’m simply actually locked in on that.”

After lacking a close-range putback on the buzzer in a one-point loss to Stanford within the Last 4 final season, Boston bounced proper again this 12 months.

“We knew this was a brand new staff,” Boston stated. “We have now much more depth.”

The Gamecocks have been a staff on a mission.

“It’s a reduction proper now, and it feels nice. However we’re going to soak up this second, and we’re not performed but, so we nonetheless have unfinished enterprise,” stated Destanni Henderson, who hit three 3-pointers on Friday.

UConn (30-5) took care of the Cardinal, outlasting Stanford 63-58 within the second sport. Bueckers had 14 factors, 5 assists and two steals in her hometown to assist get Auriemma again to the title sport for the primary time since 2016.

“Factors are laborious to come back by on this match, and in the present day was definitely no totally different,” Auriemma stated. “We’re going to need to win another approach.”

Bueckers and her teammates huddled at midcourt in celebration as soon as the buzzer sounded, most of them holding up index fingers as they shouted, “Yet another!” at one another in anticipation of the subsequent — and final sport — of this nothing-comes-easy season. Eight UConn gamers needed to miss a minimum of two video games this season with damage or sickness.

These Huskies, the one No. 2 seed on this Last 4, may need overachieved a little bit, as unusual as that sounds for such a dynastic program.

“Coming in, I don’t suppose we’re the perfect staff there. I don’t suppose we will win even when we play our ‘A’ sport. We want assist. We want Stanford to not play their finest sport. We want them to overlook pictures they usually make,” Auriemma stated.

UConn has by no means misplaced within the NCAA closing, sporting a staggering 11-0 file in nationwide championships. The 4 straight titles the Huskies received from 2013-16 was a streak interrupted by none apart from South Carolina in 2017, when UConn misplaced to Mississippi State on an additional time buzzer-beater within the Last 4.

The Gamecocks’ solely championship got here 5 years in the past.

Nonetheless, South Carolina beat UConn within the Battle 4 Atlantis match within the Bahamas in November, pulling away from the Huskies within the fourth quarter with that stifling protection.

And no person can have extra of the highlight Sunday than Bueckers, the smooth-shooting, lightning-quick sophomore guard. She grew up in a first-ring suburb of Minneapolis and grew her sport at Hopkins Excessive College, simply 10 miles west of the world that is offered out this weekend with crowds of greater than 18,000.

“It does not actually matter the placement,” stated Bueckers, who missed almost three months this season to a left knee damage. “We’re simply attempting to win and preserve enjoying with this staff.”

For Bueckers, who final 12 months turned the primary freshman to win the Participant of the 12 months award, this stretch run has been all about getting again in control after an extended layoff. Twice within the fourth quarter, she grimaced and gingerly walked round after laborious landings, however there isn’t any approach that knee — even when it is not 100% — will preserve her from going all out for the title.

“All people goes to put it on the road,” Bueckers stated, “and that’s simply basketball.”