SPOKANE, Wash. — The celebration after the final buzzer sounded Monday night, and the score showed that UConn beat USC 78-64 to advance to another Final Four felt almost anti-climatic.
Like this was what was supposed to happen all along.
Sure, there was some excitement, smiles and hugs between players. Plenty of photos and tossing confetti at one another.
But Connecticut — as it hasn’t done for as long as Geno Auriemma can remember — didn’t partake in the tradition of cutting down the nets to celebrate a Final Four berth.
The Huskies are saving that for Tampa, Fla., where they hope to win a national championship.
“We’ve cut down a bunch of those,” Auriemma said.
This may be Connecticut’s 16th Final Four trip in the past 17 NCAA Tournaments — an impressive run that likely never will be replicated. But contrary to popular belief, none of this is easy.
Monday’s game is a prime example of that.
The game got dicey for Connecticut in the second half after the Huskies had their 19-point lead cut to five at the end of the third quarter.
It was an impressive fight back for the Trojans, who were without top player JuJu Watkins after she suffered a season-ending knee injury last week.
But on a night when one of college basketball’s biggest stars was noticeably absent, Paige Bueckers, the more senior superstar, shined bright and kept her team’s hopes of ending Connecticut’s nearly decade-long title drought.
Bueckers, who played the entire 40 minutes, scored 11 of her team-high 31 points in the fourth quarter to keep the Trojans at bay.
But Bueckers’ impact went far beyond scoring
She helped Azzi Fudd, who had been 0-for-9 entering the fourth, get going. All eight of Fudd’s fourth-quarter points came on Bueckers assists.
UConn didn’t need quite another signature performance by Bueckers, who dropped 40 points in the Sweet 16 just two nights earlier.
Freshman Sarah Strong had scored 10 of Connecticut’s 14 first-quarter points and finished with 22 points and 17 rebounds.
If we learned anything about this USC team over the past week, though, it’s that the Trojans are courageous and not quitters. They could’ve played the “oh-woe-is-we” game when Watkins went down with a season-ending knee injury.
But USC didn’t.
They won two games and advanced to their second straight Elite Eight.
The Trojans trailed by double digits but didn’t give up. They kept chipping away at the Huskies, who got a little too comfortable with their double-digit lead.
Talia von Oelhoffen scored 10 points in the third quarter, including the basket that made it a five-point game heading into the fourth.
USC battled until the very end. But UConn is too deep, too star-studded for the Trojans to take down without its motor.
“People probably thought, ‘Oh, we’re going to win by 35,’ ” Auriemma said. “But it’s not supposed to be like that. It’s supposed to be hard. This is really, really hard. And I give a lot of credit to USC for what they were able to do given what they had to endure with JuJu. It’s not easy. … We had to show some grit.”
While the Huskies advance to their 16th Final Four in 17 NCAA Tournaments, USC will have to live with the what ifs and what could have been.
Connecticut next heads to Tampa, where they’ll play UCLA, the No. 1 overall seed of this year’s tournament, Friday for a shot at playing in the national championship game.
