The South Carolina Gamecocks take home the National Championship trophy with a 64-49 win over the UConn Huskies. South Carolina came out with force, jumping out to an 11-2 lead early in the first quarter. The Gamecocks used tough defense and offensive rebounding to build the lead.
UConn played better in the second quarter; Paige Bueckers got it going a little bit. But the Huskies still went into the half down by eight. UConn cut South Carolina’s lead down to five late in the third quarter. Gamecocks coach Dawn Staley called a timeout and said this to her team.
“I said, here we go again. Here we go again. We take bad shots. We turn the basketball over, and UConn licks their chops in those scenarios. I think we called a timeout. Yeah, I did call a timeout. Usually I don’t call a timeout because I know exactly what was taking our place, but our team needed a timeout just so we could refocus so we could understand we can’t have too many of those instances where we allow them to take uncontested shots. They understood, and they went out and made better decisions and we opened up a bigger lead.”
After the timeout, South Carolina got it together and went on to close out the game. Aliyah Boston had her 30th double-double of the season with 11 points and 16 rebounds. But it was Destanni Henderson who stole the show, scoring a career-high 26 points on 9-20 shooting from the field. Henderson was very aggressive in the game, and it paid off for her. She had this to say about her career-high performance.
“I really didn’t even know I had a career high, to be honest with you. But when people spoke about it and let me know that, it’s just even more of a blessing and just an honor to do it in this moment, a special moment that all of us is going to remember forever.”
The Huskies struggled with defensive rebounding, the Gamecocks grabbed 21 offensive rebounds, and when you offensive rebound, you tend to shoot a lot of free throws. South Carolina won the free throw attempt battle 26-4. Bueckers scored 14 points, but Henderson did an outstanding job defending her and not letting Bueckers score easy baskets.
Christyn Williams, the Huskies leading scorer, only scored two points, and Azzi Fudd, who came down with illness, scored three points. However, South Carolina did an excellent defending, UConn could not get clean looks, and it showed with them only scoring 49 points.
The Gamecocks have been the best team all year long, and they proved in once again on Sunday night. Boston had this to say about having a target on their back all season long.
“I think it’s just a testament to our team and how good we are. I think Coach did a great job of scheduling us a hard nonconference schedule which kept us prepared and we were able to fight through all those games, so it shows you how determined we were to continue to be successful.”
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