UConn Women Suffer Crushing Defeat To Irish in National Semis

By Bob Phillips

Katie Lou Samuelson (33) drives against Notre Dame's Jackie Young (5).
Young had a career-best 32 points to lead the Irish over the Huskies in the
national semifinal game, 91-89 in OT.

COLUMBUS, OH—For the second year in a row, the UConn women’s basketball team saw their

hopes and dreams (and perfect record) crushed in the Final Four. Last year, it was Mississippi State that vanquished the Huskies in the national semifinals. That one ended the Huskies’ 111-game winning streak. This year, if possible, the sting was even worse as the Huskies dropped a 91-89 decision in overtime to archrival Notre Dame before a sellout crowd of 19,564 at Nationwide Arena in Columbus, Ohio.

Diminutive guard guard Arike Ogunbowale delivered the knock-out punch for ND with one second remaining in overtime. This was the fourth time the Irish have defeated the Huskies in the national semifinals dating back to 2001, the year Notre Dame won its only national championship to date. (2011 and 2012 were the other years the Irish knocked out the Huskies in the national semifinals.)

Notre Dame was playing with a short roster thanks to not one, not two, not three, but four players out with torn ACLs. And up against a team that came into the contest with an unblemished 36-0 record, the Irish’s challenge was immense. But largely on the back of Ogunbowale (27 points) and Jackie Young (a career-best 32 points to go along with , the Irish wore down the Huskies and ultimately prevailed. Jessica Shepard added 11 points and 11 boards for Notre Dame, which improved to 34-3 and advances to the national championship game against Mississippi State on Easter Sunday night.

Napheesa Collier led Connecticut with 24 points, while Azura Stevens added 19, Katie Lou Samuelson 16, Gabby Williams 12, and Kia Nurse had 10 in her last game as a Huskie. Gabby Williams had a double-double (12 points, 10 boards) in what would ultimately also be her last game with UConn.

“There's nothing you can say to a college kid after experiencing this two years in a row that's going to make them feel any better about, you know,” UConn head coach Geno Auriemma said. “We had an amazing run for five months. That's just the way it is. One weekend in March gets to decide your season.”

And so now it’s back to the drawing board for Auriemma and his Huskies. After Connecticut’s second straight heartbreaking loss in the national semis, there has been some talk that the Huskies’ undisputed national dominance might be on the wane. That’s highly unlikely, so long as Auriemma remains at the helm of the Huskies’ ship, and according to The New York Times, Geno, now 64, has hinted that he may coach until he’s 70. Not good news for the rest of college basketball.

And let us not forget, the nation’s top recruit, 5-11 guard Christyn Williams from Arkansas, is Storrs-bound next season.

“UConn is still the king and queen and leader of the pack,” noted Joanne P. McCallie, head coach at Duke. “Let’s look at the next four years. That will be the pattern to evaluate.” Connecticut defeated Duke in the Albany Region semifinals last week.

The Irish came out firing on all cylinders, Geno, leading by 13 in the first quarter, and were down five with 21 seconds to go in regulation. And then, there was the overtime, where the Huskies met their match for the second straight year—both times on a buzzer-beater.

“Some things just don't need explanations, you know,” said Auriemma. “You really can't describe what goes into… what goes into getting here and trying to win a championship. It's very, very difficult. For a long, long time, we made it look like it was easy, but it's very, very difficult, as it's played out the last two years.”

The Huskies led by seven points at intermission, and were up by three at the third turn. But the Irish rallied, and were leading by five with under a minute to go in regulation before Napheesa Collier hit a 3-pointer with 15 seconds left and Kia Nurse had a steal for a layup a few seconds later to tie it. After Notre Dame turned it over with 3.6 seconds left in regulation, Gabby Williams' runner was short, sending the game to overtime.

“I think it was one of those games where, obviously, it was just a grind back and forth the entire game, and it was just a battle,” said Nurse, the Canadian national and a sure-fire first-round pick in the upcoming WNBA draft. “I think, like coach said, there were so many times they could have put us away, and we clawed and clawed and clawed our way back into it and made big play after big play. So I'm proud of my team and the way they played in that section.”

“Well, there's really not a whole lot that you can say in a moment like that, to have a game like that and then come up short,” a disappointed Auriemma said after the game. “We knew we were playing a great team, obviously, and we knew they had a lot of players that could decide the game. They thought they had us put away a couple of times, and we kept coming back and coming back, and we just ran out of time.”

Ironically, before the NCAA Tournament this year, Auriemma told a group of UConn supporters to enjoy the current wave of success while they can because “this isn’t going to last forever.”

Boy, was he ever right.

—with staff reports

Huskies Wallop South Carolina, Advance to 11th Straight Final Four

The Huskies celebrate after vanquishing South Carolina in the Albany
Region Final. Now, it's off to Columbus, OH, for an unprecedented 11th
straight appearance in the Final Four.

By Bob Phillips

ALBANY—To the surprise of no one, Gabby Williams led five Huskies in double digits with 23 points, and the University of Connecticut Huskies punched their ticket to the Final Four with a 94-65 victory over South Carolina before 9,522 fans at the Times Union Center on Monday night. Crystal Dangerfield added 21 points—19 coming in the first half, in which the Huskies built a 21-point cushion. It was a rare match-up of the previous two national champions.

Katie Lou Samuelson popped in 17 for the Huskies, while Napheesa Collier added 16, and Kia Nurse added 11. South Carolina’s A’ja Wilson led all scorers with 27 points (15 from beyond the arc) and Alexis Jennings added 15 for the Gamecocks, who were shooting for their second straight national title.

The Huskies took command of the contest early, hitting nine of their first 14 shots—including 5-for-6 from beyond the arc—to take an 18-point lead, 30-12, at the first turn.

With the loss, the Gamecocks end their season with a 29-7 record. The Huskies, meanwhile, improve to 36-0.

“To get back to Final Four... I mean, every team starts their season and says, that's our goal, to go to the Final Four. So for us, it's an opportunity to go back to where we felt like we didn't really give our best effort [last season],” said Husky head coach Geno Auriemma, referring to last year’s loss to these same Gamecocks. “You know, we lost to a really good team, but it happened in a way that was really, really disappointing, and I know that we were really anxious to go back and put ourselves in that same situation, and see how much we've changed since last year.

“We got beat by a really good UConn team,” said South Carolina head coach Dawn Staley, the former Virginia star who has had plenty of experience competing with the Huskies as a player and coach. Staley also played in the old ABL and the WNBA, and succeeds Auriemma as head coach of the United States National Team. She will coach the U.S. team at the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo. “Obviously we didn't have enough to compete in the way that we would have liked to, but now all is well in women's basketball.”

The Huskies now head to Columbus, OH, where they will take on arch-rival Notre Dame in the national semifinal game on Friday night. The Irish topped Oregon, 84-74, in the Spokane Region final. Tip-off at the Nationwide Arena is slated for 9:30 p.m., and the game will be televised on ESPN2 and streamed on WatchESPN. Mississippi State and Louisville will play in the first semifinal at 7 p.m. That game will also be televised on The Deuce and streamed on ESPN3/WatchESPN.

This will be the Huskies’ unprecedented 11^th consecutive trip to the Final Four. Think about that for a second. When Connecticut started its streak in Tampa in 2008, Maya Moore, Tina Charles, Renee Montgomery and Charde Houston were the stars of the team, George W. Bush was nearing the end of his second term as President, Barack Obama was the junior senator from Illinois, and Donald J. Trump was… well, we won’t go there.

Light years ago in college basketball terms.

Notes:

• This was the first time the previous two national champions met in the NCAAs since 1997 when UConn lost to Tennessee. It had happened twice before that.
• It was the second time UConn and South Carolina met this season. The Huskies topped the Gamecocks, 83-58, at the Colonial Life Arena in Columbia, SC, on Feb. 1.
• Albany had the best attendance of the four regionals, with over 10,000 fans attending on Friday night for the semifinals and 9,522 on Monday night. That two-day total easily eclipsed the 15,949 from 2015 when Albany last hosted the regional. “The attendance is a result of a lot of hard work by people in the community who are interested in seeing women's basketball develop to a higher level in Albany,” MAAC commissioner Rich Ensor said. It’s also a result of New York’s capital city being within driving distance of the Nutmeg State.
• Albany will host again next year.

—with staff reports