And another one: UConn makes history with fourth straight title, 11th overall
The greatest program in history now has the greatest class in history.
Connecticut’s three senior stars – Breanna Stewart, Moriah Jefferson and Morgan Tuck – became the first players to win national championships in all four of their collegiate seasons when the Huskies crushed Syracuse 82-51 on Tuesday at Bankers Life Fieldhouse in Indianapolis.
No women’s team ever had won more than three straight national titles, and the only men’s team to do so, UCLA from 1967 to 1973, did so before freshmen were eligible.
Coach Geno Auriemma passed UCLA men’s coach John Wooden with his 11th national title, and the Huskies finished 151-5 in the seniors’ time at UConn. Throw out the freshman year and it’s 116-1, with a current 75-game win streak.
The Huskies sapped the suspense from Tuesday’s title game early. Tuck’s free throw 11 seconds after the tip gave UConn a lead it never relinquished, and they stretched it to 9-0 before the Orange got on the scoreboard. A subsequent 10-0 run made it 23-6, and by halftime it was 50-23.
Only a stunning 16-0 third-quarter run by Syracuse kept UConn from the biggest blowout in Women’s Final Four history, but the spurt didn’t even cut the Huskies’ lead in half. Senior and former walk-on Briana Pulido drilled a long baseline jumper for the game’s final basket and a perfect exclamation point, exhilarating the already jubilant UConn bench.
Stewart dominated at both ends of the floor and was named the Most Outstanding Player for a fourth time. No one else has done so more than twice.
UConn’s unprecedented success overshadowed the other storyline from Indianapolis, the Final Four debuts of the three other teams. The overachieving Orange had won two tournament games before this season’s improbable run, and Oregon State and Washington gave the Pac-12 a pair of surprise national semifinalists.
Those three teams and the top seeds that didn’t make it to Indianapolis – Baylor, Notre Dame and South Carolina – figure to be among the group scrambling to prevent next season’s new-look Huskies from stretching the program’s title streak to five.
It’ll mark the first time since these seniors were freshmen that UConn isn’t the obvious team to beat.
Of course, that UConn team won the national title – in the biggest championship-game blowout of them all.
