Arizona put defensive vise on UConn in reaching today’s NCAA title game
— UConn has never lost a national championship game in the 11 times its been there. It's the national semifinals that have most recently given the Huskies so much trouble.
UConn, the top-ranked women's basketball team in the country and playing in its 13th straight Final Four, lost its Final Four opener for the fourth straight NCAA tournament Friday night at the Alamodome.
Instead, it was Final Four newcomer Arizona and the unstoppable Aari McDonald, along with a suffocating brand of defense which kept UConn far, far below it's season scoring average, that shed its role as the underdog and rose to the moment with a 69-59 victory.
UConn never led, with McDonald, who had 26 points, opening the game with a 3-point field goal.
"First I want to congratulate Arizona. They played amazing," said UConn coach Geno Auriemma, who began answering questions well after midnight back in Connecticut. "That first half, it was incredibly difficult for us to get anything done.
"I thought the intensity level they played with and the aggressiveness on the defensive end, we just didn't respond as I hoped we would. That's two games in a row now that we faced that kind of pressure. I think it took its toll. I said going into the game, I don't think we've had to play against a guard as good as (McDonald) is and she proved it tonight.
"We pride ourselves on being pretty good at certain things and we had no answer for her."
Arizona (21-5) will face Pac-12 Conference rival Stanford in the national championship at 6 p.m. to. Stanford held off a last-second offensive rebound attempt by South Carolina's Aliyah Boston to win 66-65 in Friday's first semifinal.
Meanwhile, UConn (28-2), with seven freshmen on its roster and poised for more headlines in the future, has not played in a national championship game since winning its last title in 2016, falling since then to Mississippi State in overtime (2017), Notre Dame in overtime (2018) and Notre Dame a second time in 2019.
Christyn Williams finished with 20 points for UConn and freshman All-American Paige Bueckers, named earlier this week as the Associated Press National Player of the Year, had 18 points, seven rebounds and four assists, including a 3-pointer which brought the Huskies to within five points with 1 minute, 26 seconds to play. Evina Westbrook added 10 points.
The Huskies, who averaged 82.7 points per game prior to Friday, shot 20-for-56 against Arizona (35.7%) and trailed by double figures just 47 seconds into the second quarter on back-to-back baskets by Cate Reese. They remained down by a 32-22 margin at halftime, only that close because of Williams, who scored eight straight points for the Huskies.
Arizona's McDonald, meanwhile, had 15 points in the first half, going 4-for-7 from 3-point range, including the first basket of the game and a remarkable long-range shot with time running out on the shot clock late in the second quarter that put the Wildcats up 12 at 32-20.
In addition, McDonald, the Pac-12 Player of the Year and Pac-12 Defensive Player of the Year, helped force nine UConn turnovers in the first half.
"We just played a little bit better tonight," said Arizona coach Adia Barnes, in her fifth season coaching at her alma mater. "But would I want to face UConn in a seven-game series? Absolutely not. I think this time of year, beating a team once, you just got to get hot.
"I thought we played good defense and we disrupted some of their offense. But they're really good."
Williams said she thinks UConn, which withstood a physical battle with Baylor earlier in the week to reach the Final Four, winning 69-67 in the game's final seconds, may have taken the team's role as the favorite against Arizona a little too cavalierly.
That's something Auriemma would later attribute to the team's immaturity, with 10 members of the roster who had never played in a Final Four before.
"I think we came out with the wrong mentality," Williams said. "I thought we thought it was going to be easy, I guess. We got flustered. They had great ball pressure. It wasn't like anything we've seen this season. We just couldn't get in the flow offensively."
In the third quarter, Williams hit a 3 to pull UConn within five at 34-29, but Arizona pushed the lead in the other direction, lengthening the advantage to as many as 14 points at 4834. That was UConn's largest deficit of the season.
UConn scored the final five points of the third quarter with a Westbrook 3-pointer, followed by two free throws from Bueckers to make it 4839 Arizona.
The Huskies narrowed it to 48-41 on a drive by Aaliyah Edwards and got as close as five on the 3-pointer by Bueckers with 1:26 remaining, but Arizona, with an answer for everything, closed the game by going 7-for10 from the free throw line in the final 1:16.
If Auriemma's teams have been to the Final Four 21 times and have lost in the semifinals 10 times now, it's because it isn't easy, he said late Friday night.
"People think you go to the Final Four and that somehow the culture of your team, because it says 'Connecticut' on your jersey or because you're the coach that's been there 20 times, that's what is going to get you over the hump," he said. "That's not what it is. Every year I've come here, that's not what it is.
"... The other team is really good, too. They're going to take you out of a lot of things you want to do. You are going to have to have players who are that good (like McDonald), who rise above it. Arizona proved that tonight for sure."