The UConn women’s basketball team has won 11 national titles and made 21 Final Four appearances — 13 in a row. The program as a whole has the experience and the prestige, even if its young group necessarily does not. Arizona, which had never played in a national semifinal game prior to this season, has not come close to those heights.
None of that seemed to matter on Friday night at the Alamodome in San Antonio.
Third-seeded Arizona, in a position it’s never been in before, looked like the more comfortable team and beat No. 1 UConn, 69-59, to advance to Sunday’s national championship game against Stanford, the top overall seed in the NCAA Tournament.
Senior Aari McDonald, the Pac-12′s defensive and overall player of the year, led Arizona with 26 points. UConn junior Christyn Willliams scored a team-high 20 points before she fouled out, while freshman Paige Bueckers, named the AP National Player of the Year this week, scored 18.
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Here’s how Arizona pulled off the upset.
Turning point
McDonald drilled a 3-pointer just 42 seconds into the game to open the scoring and the Wildcats showed early that they were not scared of UConn or overwhelmed by the moment.
At the time, all it appeared to be was Arizona’s best player continuing her hot tournament (she scored 30 points in back-to-back games entering the Final Four).
It turned out to be a lead that the Huskies would never catch up to.
Arizona led 16-10 after the first quarter, and held a 10-point advantage at halftime. The Huskies cut Arizona’s lead to as little as one point, midway through the first quarter, but could never even tie the game.
At one point in the third quarter UConn trailed by 14 points — its largest deficit of the season.
Williams, who had been UConn’s best player through three-and-a-half quarters, fouled out of the game with 3:51 to go in the fourth. If a comeback had seemed unlikely already, it seemed even more impossible with the junior guard on the bench.
Keys to the game
UConn played its worst half of the season, with a season-low 22 points in the first on 32% shooting (8-for-25 shooting) in the first two quarters. Arizona’s defense was stifling, and kept Bueckers (1 for 4 in the first half) in check as McDonald was the primary defender.
The Huskies, on paper, had the size advantage. Arizona’s Cate Reese (6 feet 2) is the tallest player who sees the floor regularly, and UConn averages more rebounds per game than the Wildcats.
It did not matter. UConn barely won the rebound battle (36-34) and the Huskies’ bigs (Olivia Nelson-Ododa and Aaliyah Edwards) shot a combined 3 of 13 from the field as the team made just seven of its 21 layup attempts.
Arizona’s defense, which McDonald described at halftime on ESPN’s broadcast as “suffocating and stingy” forced 12 UConn turnovers leading to 14 points.
The unrelenting Wildcats seemed to have an answer for every UConn run in the second half, too. Bueckers hit a jumper and Williams hit a 3-pointer early in the third quarter to pull the Huskies within five, but Arizona responded with a 5-0 run of its own. When UConn went on a 7-0 run at the end of the third quarter and beginning of the fourth to cut the Arizona lead to seven points, the Wildcats answered with a 5-0 run to extend the lead back to 12.
UConn went on a 5-0 run with 4:18 left in the fourth — Williams hit a 3-pointer and a pair of free throws — but there was McDonald again, who banked in a layup, got fouled and hit the free throw to bump Arizona’s lead back up to nine.
Bueckers hit a timely 3-pointer, the final one of her freshman season, to pull UConn within five points with 1:26 left in the game — the closest the game got in the fourth quarter. But Arizona didn’t shake. Sam Thomas hit a pair of free throws to give Arizona a 62-55 lead. Edwards sank a layup with 1:03 to go, but Arizona’s Bendu Yeaney hit two free throws — her first attempts of the game — to build the lead back up.
The two sides exchanged free throws in the final minute, but the Huskies needed more than foul shots at that point.
Player of the game
McDonald. The tournament’s leading scorer continued her strong play on both ends. She led the Wildcats in scoring and helped hold Bueckers to just five points on 25% shooting in the first half.
