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.
Notes and musings:
Stanford Cardinal vs UConn Huskies 4.5.09 NCAA Women’s Semifinal box score
The starters were Renee Montgomery, Tiffany Hayes, Kalana Greene, Maya Moore and Tina Charles.
This is the 6th time that the Huskies have advance to the NCAA Championship Game. They are perfect up to this point.
UConn head coach Geno Auriemma has now posted 70 NCAA Tournament wins in his career – one behind Mike Krzyewski (71) for the second-most all-time in NCAA history (men’s and women’s).
Renee Montgomery extended streak of consecutive starts to 139 – a UConn record and the longest currently in the nation.
The Huskies shot 49.2% (31-of-63) from the floor while the Cardinal shot 41.9% (26-of-62).
UConn had 14 assists on their 31 made baskets.
The Huskies were 8-of-21 from beyond the 3-point line (38.1%) while Stanford was 4-of-11 (36.4%).
UConn was 13-of-17 (76.5%) from the free throw line.
Stanford won the battle of the boards 39-38.
The Huskies turned 15 Cardinal turnovers into 19 points while Stanford converted 11 UConn turnovers into 9 points.
Stanford outscored UConn in the paint 38-28 and both teams had 8 points on the fastbreak.
