Women’s Final Four set with UConn, Stanford, Miss. State, SC

The Huskies scored 32 points off turnovers and put the game away in the first 10 minutes, opening a 28-13 lead. The second-longest current streak is one, shared by the other 2017 participants.

After Schaefer had a chance meeting with Auriemma while recruiting in Colorado Springs last summer, the two were in Houston at the same time in September when they got together for dinner.

“You don’t have the luxury that they had a year ago of, ‘Well, if I play great, we win by a lot”.

The second-seeded Bulldogs (33-4) sure wouldn’t mind taking a few more pointers leading up to their battle with the Huskies, winners of 111 straight games.

“I didn’t know what was going to happen”, Auriemma said after UConn defeated OR to secure a berth in the Final Four for a record 10th year in a row. Maybe that’s the way it needed to be this year, so that they all had to depend on each other instead of all depending on one person.

“They’ve got the key ingredient to beating you”, Staley said. She sank a three over her as Nurse came back to earth, and found a teammate for an understated chest bump, the kind you give when your team trails 72-43, but the future seems limitless.

And he wasn’t just talking about a Sweet 16 blowout to a Final Four berth. The Lady Vols had an 18-9 lead on the Huskies after winning their eighth NCAA title in 2008.

The win was No. 113 in the NCAA tournament for Geno Auriemma, and in the process he surpassed his longtime Lady Vols coaching rival, the late Pat Summitt.

“You want your defense to translate to your offense and that is exactly what we did”, UConn junior guard Kia Nurse said.

“The turnovers doomed us right from the get-go”, Graves said. OR stayed within single digits for less than five minutes on Monday. Senior forwards Breanna Stewart and Morgan Tuck combined for 41 points and 20 rebounds for the Huskies. And each of her four baskets was punctuated by “Looooooo!” chants from the fans. Ironically, Collier was the leader of the pack in getting to Samuelson at the American Athletic Conference Tournament earlier this month but no one could tell.

“I know everyone on this team is too”, said Katie Lou Samuelson.

Freshman guard Sabrina Ionescu scored 15 points, and freshman forward Ruthy Hebard added 12 points for the Ducks, who started three freshmen this season.

“They were pressuring us”. “Our last three weeks of the season we beat Washington, who was a three seed”. I know they’ve had so much success. The powerful Huskies used a barrage of 3-point shots in the first half to quickly dispatched OR, even through the youthful Duck squad battled courageously. The seeding is less revelatory of their talent than usual – the team is paced by a trio of freshmen, efficient big Ruthy Hebard, flashy point guard Sabrina Ionescu and classic power forward Mallory McGwire, along with the nation’s leading 3-point shooter in junior Lexi Bando – who are now going to enter next season as a consensus top-ten team in the country, no matter how they fare against CT.

I promise that there are not only 10 great basketball players playing college basketball at any given time.

“We worked really hard this year to be where we are”, Collier said. We celebrated Michael Jordan’s prolific years with the Bulls. We’ve got to be more concerned, I think, about Mississippi State than we do about anything else.