TAMPA, Fla. — The UConn women’s basketball team kept its dream of winning the program’s 12th NCAA Championship alive with an 85-51 rout of No. 1 overall seed UCLA in the Final Four on Friday night at Amalie Arena.
The No. 2 seed Huskies advance to the title game for the second time in three years, where they will face South Carolina on Sunday in a rematch of the 2022 national championship game that the Gamecocks won.
Freshman phenom Sarah Strong dominated in her first career Final Four appearance, logging 22 points on four 3-pointers, shooting 69.2% from the field. She also added a team-high eight rebounds, two assists, a steal and a block. Star guard Azzi Fudd was right behind her in offensive production with 19 points, hitting 7-for-12 from the field, and she combined with Strong to go 7-for-11 from beyond the arc.
Redshirt senior Paige Bueckers had an underwhelming performance compared to her previous three games in the NCAA Tournament but she still managed 16 points plus five rebounds, three steals and two assists without a single turnover.
The Huskies couldn’t have asked for a much better first quarter against the Bruins, shooting 55.6% from the field led by eight points from Strong. The freshman sank a pair of wide-open 3-pointers early, marking her first back-to-back games with multiple outside makes since mid-January.
Redshirt freshman Jana El Alfy had an impressive start against UCLA center Lauren Betts with two rebounds and two steals plus a second-chance put-back over the opening minutes of the first quarter. The Bruins’ star appeared visibly frustrated with El Alfy’s physicality in the paint before the teams reached the first media timeout, and she didn’t have a rebound for the first eight and a half minutes of the game. Her first was an offensive board that she failed to tip back for a layup, and UConn finished the first quarter even with the Bruins in the rebounding battle.
The Huskies’ momentum continued to roll into the start of the second quarter as Bueckers stole the ball from Bruins forward Timea Gardiner, and the possession resulted in a trip to the free throw line for Fudd. The redshirt junior hit both, then nailed a pull-up jumper seconds later to give UConn a 14-point lead less than two minutes into the quarter. Fudd outscored UCLA in the second single-handedly, 12-9, and the Bruins gave up almost as many turnovers as they had points with eight.
The Bruins began showing signs of desperation late in the first half when coach Cori Close took a timeout after the team’s sixth turnover of the second quarter resulted in a transition bucket for point guard Kaitlyn Chen, and UCLA immediately gave up another turnover out of the timeout.
UConn saw seven different scorers in the first half led by Fudd’s 19 points, and they had 19 points as a team off of 14 UCLA turnovers. Despite just six points from Buckers before halftime, the Huskies went to the locker room with a 42-22 lead.
Betts began to find some rhythm early in the third quarter, leading UCLA on a 6-0 run to open the second half, but the Bruins then went 1-for-9 from the field over the following four minutes. Bueckers had her best showing in the third shooting 3-for-6 for six points, but it was Strong who dominated the end of the quarter scoring eight points in three minutes to keep a 23-point lead for the Huskies entering the fourth.
The Huskies went up 30 points in the last three minutes of the game, and coach Geno Auriemma began to empty the bench. Sixth-year senior Aubrey Griffin scored the first Final Four points of her career on a layup, and redshirt junior Caroline Ducharme also got her first Final Four minutes since she was a freshman in 2022.
UConn allowed Betts her usual offensive production, finishing with 21 points, but she ...
