South Carolina wins 1st national title, beats Miss St 67-55

The Mississippi State Lady Bulldogs won 66-64 in overtime.

By knocking off four-time defending national champion Connecticut, Mississippi State probably caused ESPN to scrap a lot of prepared footage in prelude to the Huskies playing in the national championship game on Sunday.

The 2017 NCAA Women’s Championship Game has a different feel for the first time in five years, as the Mississippi State Bulldogs and South Carolina Gamecocks will battle it out with each program looking for its first national title. But Wilson and the Gamecocks dominated the fourth quarter, outscoring the Bulldogs 19-4 and outrebounding them 14-5.

On the other end of the court will be a familiar face and another team looking for its first title: SEC rival SC (32-4). On that January night, Wilson poured in a game-high 26 points and Gray added 17.

Morgan William darts like a waterbug on the court, but SC guards have a lot of speed as well, particularly the Gamecock’s itty bitty, 5-foot-6-inch point guard Bianca Cuevas-Moore. Breanna Richardson and Victoria Vivians had 12 points each for Mississippi State. “If we can decrease the amount of times that those plays are easy plays, I think it works in our favor. We just went out there and didn’t perform”, William said. That’s two undefeated regular seasons.

After the win, several people compared Mississippi State’s upset to the United States men’s hockey team’s do-you-believe-in-miracles win over the Soviet Union in the first game of the medal round of the 1980 Winter Olympics.

Doniyah Cliney, who has played an increased role in the tournament with Coates out, said that SC won’t do anything different just because it is playing for the Championship. Morgan William, who had become the face of the tournament with the game-winner against the Huskies after a 41-point effort against Baylor, was held to eight. She was tuned into ESPN2, where the women’s basketball team from Mississippi State was about to pull off a historic victory.

MSU committed 14 turnovers against SC last time. This could have been nerves, but who knows. UConn has 11 titles overall. The entire campaign has come down to this and one team will take home the first women’s basketball crown in school history. It took some smart halftime adjustments, but the South Carolina Gamecocks bested a Stanford team that had spent most of the NCAA tournament surprising opponents from behind. The Bulldogs also went 0-for-15 from the 3-point line, an uncharacteristically abysmal performance from beyond the arc, that again, USC can’t rely on happening Sunday.

Staley coached the University of SC their first women’s basketball national title Sunday night, 67-55 over Mississippi State, behind a 23-point, 10-rebound performance from Gamecocks junior forward A’ja Wilson.

Now they’ve erased that defeat, beating UConn (36-1) on the grandest stage in one of the sport’s greatest games.

Seven members of the gold medal-winning U.S. Olympic women’s basketball team have been honored at the NCAA women’s championship game.

“She’s right here with us”, Staley said. Catchings played high school basketball in the Dallas suburb of Duncanville.

“Make no mistake, we beat a heck of a basketball team, the greatest of all time, with the best coach of all time [Hall of Famer Geno Auriemma]”.

“Our fourth quarter execution is not what we wanted at all”, Dillingham said of the SEC Championship loss.

Staley is replacing Auriemma as head coach.

The Bulldogs rallied late in the third quarter and cut the lead to four points, after a steal and layup from guard Morgan William and free throws from center Teaira McCowan, but the charge was short-lived.

The story of this game was the UConn offense continuously trying – and failing – to penetrate Mississippi State’s interior defense.

SC defeated the Bulldogs in their only regular season game, 64-61, in Columbia, S.C. The Gamecocks prevailed again with a 59-49 victory over Mississippi State in the SEC Tournament championship game in early March.

Voepel says Vivians has struggled at times this season with her scoring. Another wasn’t selling for less than $700. “I think that’s the beauty of this team, is they changed”. It was the margin the Bulldogs had lost by a year earlier to CT in the Sweet 16. This tied things up at 60 with 27 seconds left and gave the Bulldogs a chance at the last shot to win the game.

The Huskies have won the last four National Championships. Mississippi State had a shot to win it in regulation, but William’s shot was blocked in the paint during the final seconds. She had 151 assists against only 71 turnovers in 33 games (all starts).