Instant classic complete with controversy

CLEVELAND — For the better part of two hours, as jump shots arced and rebounds caromed and some 20,000 people strained to catch every bit, it all felt perfectly fated. Two teams led by two electric players who had galvanized widespread excitement for women’s basketball converged in a reverberant cathedral and then, in a fraction of a second, violently diverged.

With 3.9 seconds left, down by one point, UConn drew up a play to get the ball to star guard Paige Bueckers. The play evolved as planned and Bueckers had just caught a pass near the sidelines when officials called an offensive foul on Huskies forward Aaliyah Edwards for an illegal screen against Iowa guard Gabbie Marshall. Iowa ball.

The Huskies’ protests fell on deaf ears.

Iowa inbounded the ball to Caitlin Clark, who was immediately fouled with 3.1 seconds to go. She made her first free throw and missed the second, but a tie-up awarded possession back to the Hawkeyes with 1.1 seconds left. Clark killed more clock by throwing the ball off Bueckers and out of bounds again. And then it was over.

Iowa’s 71-69 win over UConn in Friday’s NCAA Tournament national semifinal was not decided in the hands of Bueckers, or Clark.

UConn, a team that weathered broken bodies, had their spirits broken and season ended by a blaring whistle.

Iowa, a team that forged a second-half comeback on the back of stubborn shot-making and a puff ball pig-tailed freshman, had that effort partly overshadowed by controversy.

“Everybody can make a big deal of that one single play, but not one single play wins a basketball game or loses a basketball game,” said Bueckers, who said she did not have a view of Edwards’ screen. “I feel there were a lot of mistakes that I made that could have prevented that play from even being that big or causing the game.”

That may be true, but it threatened to ruin what otherwise would have been an instant classic.

Each team’s top priority was no secret. Marshall, the Hawkeyes’ intrepid fifth-year guard, said shutting down Bueckers was her main focus. The Huskies declared they would harass Clark with as many defenses as they could.

After seeing LSU’s poor job defending Clark in Iowa’s Elite Eight win, UConn doubled Clark as soon as she got the ball inside the 3-point line. Huskies guard Nika Muhl fought her way over screens to stay in Clark’s shadow, the enormity of which was clear by the screams that soundtracked each time the Hawkeyes guard touched the ball.

At halftime, UConn led 32-26 and Iowa had more turnovers (12) than made field goals (11). UConn freshman KK Arnold, the team’s energetic spark who doesn’t have an off switch, led all scorers with 10 points. Bueckers had seven points on 3-of-9 shooting. Clark had six points and had missed all six of her 3-point attempts.

But there was a sense after halftime that things would change. Prior to Friday, Clark had not scored fewer than 21 points in a game this season. Bueckers had shot at least 40% in her last 11 games.

With her 3-point shot not falling, Clark began driving to the paint. In between making ridiculously off-balance jump shots, she continued to feed three-quarters court passes ahead to Sydney Affolter and Kate Martin and find center Hannah Stuelke in the paint.

“Sometimes when (Clark) is not hitting it maybe it gets to her but you know, she does have so much pressure on her,” Affolter said. “I mean, she’s the best player in the country and she expects so much from herself and she wants to be so great. I think she did a great job finding us, her teammates, when she wasn’t hitting. She has all the confidence in the world within herself. She has spent an unreal amount of hours in the gym and she has so much confidence in herself so she’s gonna get into it and we kept telling her, ‘We know you’re gonna keep shooting and make those shots. We trust you.’”

With under six minutes to play, Edwards and Arnold doubled Affolter on the right block, and she wrapped a pass around them toward the opposite sideline. It bounced three times before it reached Marshall, who with plenty of time drilled a 3 and turned to soak up the reaction from Iowa’s bench and the crowd.

“Going to the national championship game is, everybody’s stepping up. It’s not just me,” Clark said. “It’s not just one player. That’s not what this is. We wouldn’t be at this point right now if it was just one player. And everybody comes up and makes really big plays when we need them.”

The Hawkeyes led by 10, and the Huskies’ foul trouble and short bench was starting to show.

For several seasons, Iowa coach Lisa Bluder has repeated to her team a quote she has framed in her locker room at CarverHawkeye Arena, scrawled on a piece of paper for her by tennis legend Billie Jean King. It says, “Pressure is a Privilege,” a reminder not only of the enormous expectations the Hawkeyes have come to command but also that this is an environment of their own creation.

“We created this as a team,” Marshall said. “Our success led to selling out Carver every single night. Our success led to so many people watching this play in opposing arenas, everyone around the world saying they’re tuning into our games or they’re rooting for us. That’s a special feeling.”

Marshall maintained that she thought Edwards moved on the screen at the end of the game. But when the Hawkeyes found themselves at last celebrating in their locker room, and the Huskies comforted each other in theirs, one Hawkeye was the last to enter.

Clark moved from interview to interview, praising her teammates and rehashing a game her opponent would sooner forget. On her way back to the locker room, in a hallway enveloped by the smell of postgame fajitas and hushed deference for the nearby UConn locker room, she got pulled on camera for one final interview.

The interview ended. Clark stepped out of the blinding light and continued down the hall to Iowa’s locker room. A team official held the door open and Clark stepped through, swallowed up for the moment until she is to reemerge again.

That will come Sunday in the title game against undefeated South Carolina, which beat N.C. State 78-59 in the other semifinal.