Paige Bueckers is ending her college career on top.
Bueckers and UConn cruised to yet another dominant 82-59 win over South Carolina at Amalie Arena in Tampa, Florida, on Sunday afternoon to win the national championship. It marks the program’s 12th title in team history, and the first since 2016. They are now the first Division I team with a dozen championships, all of which have come under head coach Geno Auriemma.
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The win capped what has been a truly dominant run for the Huskies throughout the women’s NCAA tournament this spring. While Bueckers has recorded multiple 30-point games, it was Azzi Fudd and Sarah Strong who repeatedly showed out to complete a trio that nobody else in the field was able to stop.
They won every single game by double figures and beat three No. 1 seeds — including a 34-point rout over top-seeded UCLA in the Final Four — to win their title. Bueckers, who is expected to be the No. 1 overall pick in the WNBA Draft on April 14, now turns pro with a championship. She had led the Huskies to four Final Four appearances, but they fell to South Carolina in the national championship game in 2022.
South Carolina came out of the gate hot, but completely shut down at the end of the first quarter. After opening the game making five of their first seven shots, the Gamecocks missed seven of their next eight to end the quarter. They didn’t score at all after Joyce Edwards hit a free throw at the 3:59 mark either. That allowed UConn to jump up by five at the first break.
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Though UConn entered the locker room with just a single made 3-pointer, which Ashlynn Shade hit right before the buzzer, the Huskies still doubled their lead after the second quarter, holding a 36-26 edge at the break. They held South Carolina to just 12 points in the second quarter and limited them to a single field goal in the final five minutes of the period. Strong nearly had a double-double in the first 20 minutes with eight points and 11 rebounds, too. It was the highest rebounding total in a single half of a national championship game since Tina Charles in 2009.
UConn then took off in the third quarter, thanks in part to an 11-point stretch from Fudd. She hit a huge 3-pointer late in the period, which Sarah Strong followed up quickly with one of her own, to help push them to a 20-point lead after the period, at 62-42. They ended the quarter on a 12-3 run, too, which gave them their largest lead of the game at that point.
The fourth quarter was much of the same. The Huskies cruised to the 23-point win without any issue after opening the last period on an 18-6 run.
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Bueckers, Fudd and Strong combined for 65 total points in the win, which marked yet another massive outing for the group. Bueckers finished with 17 points, which moved her past Maya Moore for the third-most career points in the NCAA tournament. Fudd had 24 points, and was named the Final Four’s Most Outstanding Player.
Strong finished with 24 points and 15 rebounds. Strong set an NCAA tournament record for points by a freshman in a single tournament, too, and she’s the third freshman in history to drop 20 points in both a semifinal and national title game.
Edwards and Tessa Johnson each dropped 10 points off the bench to lead South Carolina in the loss, though they were the only two Gamecocks players to hit double figures. Chloe Kitts finished with nine points and six rebounds, and Sania Feagin finished with eight points. They shot 21-of-61 from the field as a team and just 4-of-16 from behind the arc.
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While South Carolina failed to back up last year’s championship, the Gamecocks’ remarkable run is still very much intact. They’ve been to five straight Final Fours, three of the last four national championship games and won two national titles. But, with how Bueckers and the Huskies were playing late in the season, there was simply no stopping them.
Bueckers was going out on top.
