Paige Bueckers and its UCONN teammates did not reduce the net after obtaining a trip in the Final Four, even if a scale has been installed and ready to leave. The reason was simple: the Huskies are not yet finished.
Bueckers brought UCONN to their 24th NCAA female tournament for the NCAA female tournament, marking 31 points on Monday evening in a 78-64 victory against southern California, which could not overcome the loss of the injured star Juju Watkins.
Uconn heads for Tampa, Florida, to face the Global Sear Age 1 UCLA on Friday. The other semi-final will take place between an All-Sec confrontation between the title champions of the South Carolina and Texas.
The first year student Sarah Strong added 22 points and 17 rebounds for the Huskies, the second seeded, who won a record of 11 NCAA titles, all under the coach Geno Auriemma. Their last championship took place in 2016, the last in a series of four games in a row.
“We have a lot of heart and a lot of tenacity about us. And we play together as a team. We are super well connected,” said Bueckers. “I feel like each team I played on, we were very well connected. But just the way we went through so much adversity as an individual, as a team, how much it gathered, how strong it made us stronger.”
Rayah Marshall scored 23 points and 15 rebounds for the serial USC (31-4), which also lost Uconn in the elite eight last year when Watkins was a first-year student.
The fans had planned a revenge match between Bueckers and Watkins when the supports were announced, but the match lost a little of the chandelier when the Trojan’s horses custody torn an ACL in the second round and needs surgery. While Trojan horses have passed the Kansas State in Sweet 16 without Watkins, they had a more difficult challenge against Uconn and Bueckers, the probable overall choice in the front of the WNBA draft next month.
After scoring only two points in the first quarter, Bueckers collected 11 points in the last period.
“Nothing would happen without the team, and everything that enters a performance,” she said. “So, just trying to lead with what the game calls, leading with what we need at that time, at that time, whether it is going, bounce, mark, just try to do everything you need to win.”
Bueckers, a senior, won the honors AP All-America and was the player of the year Big East for the third time. The only thing to do is a national title after she and the Huskies were beaten in the Final Four last year by Caitlin Clark and Iowa. She has an average of 35 points in her last three March Madness games, including 40 -point career summits and six three points in the rout of Huskies Oklahoma in Sweet 16.
In the other match on Monday, Madison Booker scored 18 points and the Texas series n ° 1 used his stifling defense to reach the Final Four for the first time since 2003, beating the well-traveled leader Hailey Van Lith and the second TCU 58-47. Texas won a regional final for the first time under the coach Vic Schaefer, who previously made two last trips with the state of Mississippi. The 35 Longhorns victories are one that their only national winning team of the title in 1986 under Jody Conradt, who was in the stands on Monday evening.
The Final Four takes place on Friday evening, with the championship match at 3 p.m. on Sunday. A year ago, the female title game attracted a larger television public than men for the first time, with an average of 18.9 million viewers watching the South South Carolina Beating Iowa and Clark.
