With less than 30 seconds left in the Elite Eight matchup, top-seeded UConn led No. 2 Baylor by a point.
The Bears, looking to keep the game alive, fouled Christyn Williams and sent her to the free-throw line.
The Huskies’ junior missed both shots. The Bears, with 17 seconds left, had a chance to undo the work UConn did to pull itself back into the game after trailing by 10 in the third quarter, putting an end to the Huskies’ streak of 12 straight Final Fours.
Baylor’s DiJonai Carrington, who scored a team-high 22 points, drove to the rim with seconds left. But Aaliyah Edwards and Olivia Nelson-Ododa formed a wall in front of her as she rose for a jumper, and her shot fell short over the outstretched arms of UConn’s two starting forwards. The Huskies recovered the ball, Williams was fouled, hit one of two free throws, and put the game away.
UConn won 69-67, and will play in its 13th straight Final Four. The Huskies will play the winner of the night’s late second game between No. 3 Arizona and No. 4 Indiana in the Final Four on Friday.
Here’s how the Huskies did it:
Turning point
UConn trailed by 10 points with under two minutes to go in the third quarter. It hadn’t scored from the field since a Paige Bueckers layup two minutes into the quarter. The Huskies, who recorded 30 assists against Iowa in the Sweet 16, hadn’t had one since the first quarter.
Then junior Olivia Nelson-Ododa found Bueckers for a layup, and the Huskies began a run.
UConn scored the final eight points of the quarter — five from Bueckers and three from Williams — to cut the Baylor lead to just two points heading into the fourth.
The run continued into the fourth, as Bueckers and Williams scored nine of the team’s first 11 points in the quarter, part of a 19-0 run that started late in the third. Baylor’s Nalyssa Smith hit a shot to halt the UConn run, but the damage had been done. In a span of five in-game minutes, the Huskies turned a 10-point deficit into a seven-point lead.
Keys to the game
As simple as it sounds, UConn won because it got hot when it needed to most.
The Huskies can thank their guards for that.
From the two-minute mark of the third quarter to the midpoint of the fourth, Bueckers (10 points) and Williams (nine) combined for 19 of UConn’s 22 points as part of a 22-4 Huskies’ run to retake the lead after trailing by double-digits.
When Baylor cut UConn’s lead to just three points with just over a minute left, there was Williams. Edwards blocked a shot on the defensive end and the ball wound up in Williams’ hands. She sank a layup with 1:03 to go to give UConn a five-point lead.
Player of the game
Bueckers. The star freshman stepped up when her team needed her the most, scoring 10 points in a 22-4 UConn run that stretched between the third and fourth quarters.
She scored a game-high 28 points.
