Coming into tonight’s game with the Stanford Cardinal, the UConn Huskies women’s basketball team had one goal in mind. That was to win and make it to the championship game on Tuesday night. This wasn’t supposed to be an easy task for the Huskies as they would need to contain Jayne Appel and her recent dominance in the post. And oh by the way, Stanford was the last team to beat the Huskies.
It wouldn’t matter though as Renee Montgomery put her team on her back leading the way with 26 points to give UConn an 83-64 win over the Cardinal in front of 18,621 at the Scottrade Center in St. Louis to advance to the NCAA Women’s National Championship game on Tuesday night against their friends from the Big East, the Louisville Cardinals who advanced by upsetting the Oklahoma Sooners.
Besides her 26 points, the senior co-captain added 6 assists and 4 steals. Maya Moore had a quiet 24 points and 8 rebounds while freshman Tiffany Hayes added 11 points. Kalana Greene chipped in with 10 points and 5 rebounds and Tina Charles added 8 points and 12 rebounds.
The only real offense the Cardinal had tonight came from Appel who had 26 points and 7 rebounds. Nnemkadi Ogwumike added 13 points and 12 rebounds while Kayla Pedersen had 10 points. Jeanette Pohlen led Stanford with 6 assists.
Hayes got the Huskies started off on the right track with a 3-pointer that was part of an 11-4 run to start the game. Appel then almost single-handedly brought the Cardinal back with 8 points that was part of a 10-2 run to give themselves a 1-point lead at 14-13.
Over the next 7 minutes, Montgomery had seen enough as she hit a 3-pointer to give the Huskies the lead back for good and it also sparked a 22-6 run to give them a 35-20 lead with just over 3 minutes to go in the half. Stanford would outscore the Huskies 4-2 the rest of the half but UConn held a 13 point lead at 37-24 going into the locker room.
The Huskies put to bed any thought of a Stanford comeback in the second half as they went on a 13-0 run over the first 5:36 before Appel ended the bleeding and a span of 7:49 without scoring with a layup. UConn continued to build it’s lead as it got as high as 31 points with 12:06 to go.
Give credit to Stanford though, they could have just sit back and taken the beating but instead they kept playing hard and got it down 19 points which drove Geno Auriemma insane on the UConn sidelines. He was definitely not pleased and did most of his yelling in the direction of Charles.
The Huskies now need one more win to complete the perfect season and take home their first national title since 2004. To do that though, they will have to beat Louisville, a team that they have beaten twice and I mean beaten badly. UConn beat the Cardinals by 28 points and 39 points this season.
But this is a different Louisville team. Their head coach Jeff Walz has them playing at an unbelievable level right now and they have all the confidence in the world right now. No one expecting them to be there while this has been UConn’s destiny since the first practice.
Can the Huskies do it or will Louisville pull off the upset? We won’t know until about 10:45 PM on Tuesday night.
Trailing by 11 points with 3:21 to go, it looked all but over for the Huskies. But then they came together as they went on an 11-3 run cut the Michigan State lead to three at 74-71 on a Stanley Robinson dunk. Unfortunately, Kemba Walker didn’t get back on defense and Durrell Summers beat him down the floor for a layup. Walker fouled him and Summers converted the free throw and just like that the Spartans were back up 6 points with a minute to go in the game.
You have to give credit where credit is due though. Tom Izzo knew exactly what he wanted to do to beat the Huskies and his players did what he asked and now find themselves with a chance to win the NCAA title.