TAMPA, Fla. — Tampa Azzi is not Spokane Azzi. It may just be what brings a national championship back to Connecticut for the first time in nearly a decade.
Azzi Fudd, one of the sharpest shooters in the game, headed to the Final Four off one of her worst performances of the season. It was a non-factor for UConn, who overmatched a USC squad missing Naismith Player of the Year JuJu Watkins in the Spokane 4 regional final.
It will be a factor moving forward. A change of scenery from pine trees to palms can do wonders.
“I left that in Spokane,” Fudd told reporters. “So it’s Tampa, a new me. It’s March, it’s the Final Four, you can’t keep any of that with you. Every game is a new game. Even each quarter, every possession is a new possession.”
The fourth-year guard scored 19 points — all in the first half, and more than in the two games in Spokane combined — to lead UConn to a 34-point victory over UCLA, the No. 1 overall seed in the NCAA tournament. The No. 2 seed Huskies are the first team in an NCAA tournament game, women’s or men’s, to defeat a No. 1 seed by 30 or more points. They bested their own record with the largest margin of victory in a Final Four game.
It all started with Fudd, who tipped the ball away on UCLA’s first possession and scored. She caused chaos for Bruins point guard Kiki Rice, a player she knows well from high school games in the Washington, D.C., area. UCLA spent the majority of the first half with more turnovers than field goals. From the jump, Fudd hunted her shot and hit three 3-pointers on five attempts, including an early one off the backboard.
“The bank was open for a minute, so I took advantage of it,” said Fudd, who went 7-of-12 overall.
That was the kind of night it was for UConn, which built a 10-point lead through one quarter and a 20-point one by half. The Huskies haven’t lost since rival Tennessee edged them by four on Feb. 6. The 15-game run includes the
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