UConn’s ladies’s basketball program is correct the place it belongs – on the mountaintop.
The Huskies earned their twelfth nationwide championship, all of which have come since 1995, with a blowout of reigning champion South Carolina on Sunday afternoon.
In her last sport earlier than heading to the WNBA, Paige Bueckers put up 17 factors in UConn’s 82-59 win over the Gamecocks.
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Connecticut Huskies guard Paige Bueckers (5) reacts in the course of the first half in opposition to the South Carolina Gamecocks of the nationwide championship of the ladies’s 2025 NCAA match at Amalie Enviornment. (Nathan Ray Seebeck-Imagn Photographs)
The Huskies led by 10 on the half, as South Carolina struggled from the ground – they’d simply 26 factors within the first 20 minutes.
However Azzi Fudd started to place the nail within the coffin within the third quarter, dropping 11 of her 24 factors within the body. Regardless of it being South Carolina’s highest-scoring quarter as much as that time, it was additionally simply UConn’s, who outscored the Gamecocks, 26-16, to take a commanding 20-point lead heading into the fourth.
The Huskies stored their foot on the pedal, although, getting out on a 18-6 run to open up the quarter, successfully icing the ball sport. After that, South Carolina took their starters out, albeit to an amazing hand.
Bueckers and Fudd, together with the starters, got here out with 1:32 to go, and an emotional Bueckers shared a protracted embrace with head coach Geno Auriemma. Bueckers made every Closing 4 of her profession however by no means reached the highest till Sunday.
Connecticut Huskies guard Paige Bueckers (5) appears to be like to shoot the ball in opposition to the South Carolina Gamecocks in the course of the first half in the course of the nationwide championship of the ladies’s 2025 NCAA match at Amalie Enviornment. (Nathan Ray Seebeck-Imagn Photographs)
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It was a taking pictures efficiency South Carolina wish to neglect – earlier than knocking two of their last three, they hit simply 2-for-13 from three. UConn, nonetheless, shot 48.4% from the ground.
Bueckers is more likely to be the primary total decide within the WNBA Draft subsequent week. She even missed a season with a torn ACL she suffered again in 2022, however she’s going to nonetheless go down as one in every of UConn’s best, which is already immortal firm to start with.
Bueckers’ 19.9 factors per sport is the most important in UConn historical past, and she or he additionally had the third-most factors in ladies’s March Insanity historical past all through a profession.
UConn middle Jana El Alfy (8) and UConn guard Paige Bueckers (5) react in the course of the first half of a nationwide semifinal Closing 4 sport in opposition to UCLA in the course of the ladies’s NCAA faculty basketball match, Friday, April 4, 2025, in Tampa, Fla. (AP Picture/Chris O’Meara)
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It is really been 9 years since UConn’s final title, which is their longest drought since profitable their again 30 years in the past. They beforehand had by no means gone greater than 5 years with out profitable all of it (from 2004 to 2009).
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