All-America forward Sarah Strong and her UConn teammates got quite a compliment from coach Geno Auriemma, who donned a cowboy hat and did a little dance on the court after the undefeated Huskies made their 25th Final Four in the women’s NCAA Tournament.
The 12-time championship coach, who has more wins than any men’s or women’s NCAA coach, said he has never been more proud of a group that he has taken to the final weekend of March Madness.
[Live Updates: NCAA Men’s, Women’s Basketball Tournament: Who’ll Advance to Final Four?]
“This group, they don’t have that kind of swagger, trash-talking kind of mentality,” Auriemma said after his 1,288th victory. “It’s not the kind of team that I’ve had in the past that has gone this far undefeated. It’s not. They don’t have that kind of mentality off the court, on the court. They’re just a bunch of really nice kids that play hard for each other.”
And they are headed to Phoenix after Strong scored 21 points, Blanca Quinonez added 20 points off the bench and the defending national champion Huskies beat Notre Dame on Sunday, 70-52.
While this is a younger group for Auriemma after Paige Bueckers, the No. 1 WNBA Draft pick, and Kaitlyn Chen were seniors on last year’s championship team, UConn (38-0) has won 54 games in a row and clinched the first spot for this year’s Final Four.
“Seeing him excited and kind of goofy is really good for us,” Strong said. “He’s usually all serious or like anxious, grumpy. Just seeing him let loose and be his true self was really good.”
“He doesn’t say anything [that] he doesn’t mean,” said All-America guard Azzi Fudd, the fifth-year senior on this squad who had 13 points, four assists and three steals. “He doesn’t give out compliments too often, depending on who you are, so to hear him say that it does mean a lot — and we feel the same way. We love this team so much.”
Hannah Hidalgo had 22 points and 11 rebounds for the Fighting Irish (25-11), plus three more steals to increase her NCAA single-season record to 202 and single NCAA tourney mark to 29. But she also had five turnovers, the first time in her 10 NCAA tourney games with more turnovers than steals.
The ninth NCAA tourney meeting between the Huskies and the Irish was their first with a spot in the Final Four on the line. They had both made it that far the first eight times they met in March Madness, the last in 2019, when Notre Dame won a semifinal game over UConn and then lost to Baylor in the title game.
This meeting in the Fort Worth Regional 1 final was the first time Notre Dame had made it past the Sweet 16 since then.
While the game was closer than January 19 when UConn won by 38 points in the most-lopsided game in the 57-game series (UConn leads 41-16), the Irish couldn’t overcome the rolling Huskies.
“They’re very, very physical,” Irish coach Niele Ivey said. “They try to take away every option that you have. They’re very disciplined. They play well together, and they just play hard.”
During a nearly five-minute stretch in the third quarter when UConn went scoreless while missing 11 consecutive shots, the Irish got no closer than eight points. Hidalgo had a jumper and two free throws for their only points, but also was responsible for three of their four turnovers in that span.
That included Fudd’s steal from Hidalgo and Jana El Alfy’s layup that ended the scoring drought and put the Huskies up 40-30 with 3:51 left in the third quarter.
UConn took its first double-digit lead with six points in a 59-second span in the second quarter. Hidalgo furiously responded when she thought she was fouled on a 3-point attempt that was instead a blocked shot by Strong.
That led to a driving layup by Quiñonez, who followed by rebounding a miss by Hidalgo and assisting on a breaking layup by Allie Ziebell. Quiñonez, the Big East freshman and sixth player of the year, then had a steal that led to a pullup jumper by Fudd for a 30-20 lead with 2:56 left in the first half.
“As always, I just try to bring something to the court, impact the game, as coach says,” Quiñonez said. “I think everyone was locked in, and I think everybody was ready to play that game.”
Up next, UConn will play its national semifinal game Friday against South Carolina or TCU, who play in the Sacramento Regional 4 final on Monday night. The Huskies beat the Gamecocks 82-59 in last year’s national championship game.
Reporting by The Associated Press.
