• The UConn Huskies women’s basketball team won their 12th national championship, defeating South Carolina 82-59.
• Azzi Fudd was named the tournament’s Most Outstanding Player, scoring 24 points in the championship game.
• UConn’s victory was a team effort, with strong performances from Fudd, Sarah Strong, and Paige Bueckers.
• This championship marks UConn’s first since 2016, ending a nine-year drought.

The UConn women’s basketball team had been through it the last few years.

Sickness. Heartbreak. Narrow losses. Deflating defeats. Entering Sunday’s national championship against South Carolina on Sunday in Tampa, Huskies coach Geno Auriemma said there was “so much riding on this game.”

Auriemma wondered earlier in the day: what kind of statement would he make if the Huskies lost, especially when it was the last opportunity for Paige Bueckers to stand on top of the women’s college basketball mountain.

But Auriemma didn’t have to spill that speech after an 82-59 thrashing over South Carolina for the program’s 12th national title.

“So I just kept thinking something good has to happen because if we were going to lose it would have been before now. I don’t think the basketball gods would take us all the way to the end — they’ve been really cruel with some of the kids on this team,” Auriemma said after Sunday’s title win. “They’ve suffered a lot of the things that could go wrong in their college careers as an athlete. So they don’t need anymore heartbreak. So they weren’t going to take us here and give us more heartbreak. I kept holding on to that.”

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Paige Bueckers gets crowning achievement as an all-time UConn great

As such, one of college basketball’s biggest stars, Bueckers, was finally rewarded. And UConn was finally rewarded nine years after its last crown in 2016, when the Huskies won their fourth straight.

But at least one major difference in 2025 vs. 2016 was just exactly how UConn won.

Yes, it was another commanding performance — the Huskies beat Syracuse by 31 in the title game nine years ago.

That team’s star — Breanna Stewart — was among the game’s leading scorers.

UConn didn’t just have Bueckers leading the charge on Sunday. She was buoyed by the dominance of Azzi Fudd and Sarah Strong, who both scored 24 to go with Bueckers’ 17. Strong also had 15 rebounds.

Strong, Fudd and Bueckers played nearly the entire game — 37 minutes, 38 minutes and 38 minutes, respectively — en route to glory.

Even then, Auriemma singled out Fudd’s performance. Rightfully so, as Fudd was named the tournament’s Most Outstanding Player.

“We kind of know what we’re going to get from Paige. We kind of know what we’re going to get from Sarah,” Auriemma said. “So Azzi became the focal point for us of who has to step up tonight. And she did magnificently, obviously.”

It was the spark UConn needed. And Fudd was just “having fun” doing it.

“I knew this is our last game regardless of what happens. So I’m going to have fun with everyone but specifically our upperclassmen,” Fudd said. “So everything I could control I knew I was going to do the best I could. So I was just trying to have fun with it.”

Paige Bueckers welcomes chance to share the spotlight

Even Bueckers — one of the undoubted faces of the college game — acknowledged just how much of Sunday’s conquest was a team effort. Compared to previous standout players and national championships, it wasn’t one player taking a game over.

“We thought we were saving our best performances for this weekend. And it’s been just, I think, a great summary of what we have been this entire season of being a team, staying connected, on any given night it can be anybody’s night,” Bueckers said. “It’s destiny and obviously I have a great faith, so I believe God planned it perfectly in the way that it went out. And it’s a great last showing of the great team basketball that we’ve been playing all season.”

Bueckers was right: any given night. So Sunday wasn’t Bueckers’ night. It wasn’t Fudd’s night. It wasn’t Strong’s night. It wasn’t even Auriemma’s night.

It was UConn’s night.

“Maybe what this one means is that there were a lot of people that didn’t think it would ever happen. There were a lot of people that hoped it would never happen,” Auriemma said. “I’m glad that we were able to get to that spot that Connecticut has occupied – not that we had to win a championship, but in the last 30 years I don’t know that any program’s meant more to their sport than what UConn has meant to women’s basketball, so I feel good about that.”