TAMPA, Fla. — Geno Auriemma raised his fists in the air, pumping them as the buzzer sounded.
His UConn women’s basketball staff rose to their feet behind him to welcome the five Huskies on the floor back to the bench, and the crowd at Amalie Arena burst into a roar.
It was only the end of the third quarter of the national championship game against South Carolina, but Auriemma knew. Everyone in the arena already knew. UConn was only 10 minutes away from winning its 12th national championship.
The No. 2 seed Huskies carried a 20-point lead into the fourth quarter. That lead grew to 32 at one point before the final buzzer sounded, and UConn beat South Carolina 82-59 Sunday to win their first national championship in nine years.
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Auriemma pondered earlier in the day what he would say if things didn’t go their way, if the national title drought continued. How could he put his emotions into words if things went wrong, especially when so much was riding on this game for so many, including his senior star Paige Bueckers?
‘I just kept thinking something good has to happen, because if we were going to lose it would have been before now,’ Auriemma said. ‘I don’t think the basketball gods would take us all the way to the end – they’ve been really cruel with some of the kids on this team.’
Bueckers is one of those kids along with senior guard Azzi Fudd. Both their careers were hampered by injuries, and both lost full seasons to win a championship together due to injuries.
The stars never aligned for a championship run – until now.
‘They don’t need anymore heartbreak, so they weren’t going to take us here and give us more heartbreak. I kept holding on to that,’ Auriemma said. ‘I’m glad they were rewarded. This is one of the most emotional Final Fours and emotional national championships I’ve been a part of since that very first one.’
UConn (37-3) returned to the mountain top, and it took down two No. 1 seeds in Tampa to do it. The Huskies were dominant in the Final Four, blowing out No. 1 overall seed UCLA 85-51 on Friday before dismantling the No. 1 seed Gamecocks (35-4) Sunday. The first time UConn met South Carolina in the 2022 national championship game, it lost.
Not this time.
Senior guard Azzi Fudd and freshman forward Sarah Strong were magnificent for UConn, both scoring a game-high 24 points. When South Carolina cut the Huskies’ lead to 11 points late in the third quarter, Auriemma called a timeout to refocus his team.
Strong assisted a 3-pointer for Fudd immediately out of the timeout. Then Strong hit a 3-pointer of her own on UConn’s next possession to make the lead 16 points.
UConn got everything it needed from its three stars to put on the kind of performance that was reminiscent of the dominant Huskies teams at the beginning of this storied dynasty. Senior guard Paige Bueckers added 17 points, six rebounds, three assists, two blocks and a steal.
Auriemma, 71, is now the oldest coach to win a national championship in men’s or women’s basketball. He joked that the other coaches had the good sense not to stick around until his age. They all feel their age at some point, he said, even if they don’t like to admit it because they act younger with the players they’re around on a daily basis.
‘I may be 71 number-wise, but I think otherwise I’m more able to do stuff with those young people because I’m around them every day and they rub off on me,’ Auriemma said. ‘Does that mean I can do this for another X number of years? No, because, you know, wine is good for you, too, and if you’re around it all the time, after a while, you wake up and you go that was really bad, I had too much fun.’
Auriemma doesn’t feel like he’s lost his ability to be a kid yet. But even though his players are fun, he knows there will come a time when the fun doesn’t outweigh how difficult his job is.
He equated it to coaching the Olympic team with the amount of pressure attached to it. It feels like more of an obligation to do what is expected – win championships.
‘Maybe what this one means is that there were a lot of people that didn’t think it would ever happen,’ Auriemma said. ‘There were a lot of people that hoped it would never happen. I’m glad that we were able to get to that spot that Connecticut has occupied.
‘Not that we had to win a championship, but in the last 30 years I don’t know that any program’s meant more to their sport than what UConn has meant to women’s basketball, so I feel good about that.’