UNFINISHED BUSINESS
After big upset, Mississippi State women take aim at one more win
DALLAS — Mississippi State didn’t get much time to celebrate what might be the greatest shocker in the history of women’s college basketball.
Not when there’s one more game to try to win, not when there’s a national championship on the line tonight against Southeastern Conference rival South Carolina.
“They’re really grounded. Our kids know what’s coming down the pike,” Bulldogs coach Vic Schaefer said Saturday. “They know now the prize is in front of them; it’s attainable. We have one heck of a team to get ready for, a tremendous staff. They’re really, really good. But it’s down to the two of us.”
Mississippi State ended UConn’s 111-game winning streak with a 66-64 overtime victory in the Final Four late Friday night. Right after 5-foot-5 point guard Morgan William hit the game-winning shot at the buzzer, teammates dogpiled her at center court as if they had won the school’s first title.
“It felt like the national championship last night,” Mississippi State star Dominique Dillingham said. games, you know, they’re much different than they were … in the SEC tournament championship. The intangible part of it is really hard to get our focus in on it. They’re playing at an all-time high. Morgan William is playing some of the best basketball I’ve ever seen.”
William followed a career-best 41-point performance in the regional final by hitting the 15-footer that stunned the Huskies. Now it’s time for one more test against a No. 1 seed and Stockton Regional champion South Carolina.
“We feel like we won it all when we won that game last night, but we know we didn’t,” William said. “We still have unfinished business, and for us to be playing South Carolina, it’s kind of like, now we get another chance — like we got another chance at UConn, now we get another opportunity to play against South Carolina, but it’s on a bigger stage and it means more.”
This is the sixth time in NCAA tournament history teams from the same conference will play for the national championship, and it’s the third time for the SEC, with Tennessee beating Auburn in 1989 and the Lady Vols topping Georgia in 1996.
Maryland beat Duke in an Atlantic Coast Conference showdown in 2006 and UConn routed Louisville in 2009 and 2013, when both were still in the Big East.
“But I promise you it’ll be a lot better tomorrow when we win.”
She knows it would be even sweeter to beat South Carolina to do it. The Bulldogs (34-4) lost twice to the Gamecocks (32-4) this year, dropping a game in South Carolina in the regular season, 64-61, and then falling 59-49 in the SEC tournament title game in Greenville, S.C.
“The first game we had against them at their place, it’s a knockdown, drag-out, came down to one play,” Schaefer said. “We talked about that with our kids. It came down to one play in that ballgame.”
While facing a familiar foe is helpful for the short turnaround, South Carolina coach Dawn Staley knows Mississippi State is a different team from the one the Gamecocks played a month ago. Seeded No. 2 in the Oklahoma City Regional, the Bulldogs made an incredible run in the NCAA tournament, reaching the Sweet 16 for just the third time and the Elite Eight and Final Four for the first time.
They made the latter breakthrough by beating No. 1 seed Baylor 94-85 a week ago.
“It does make it easier,” Staley said of seeing the Bulldogs for a third time in one season. “… But for what Mississippi State has done over the past five