How Connecticut beat South Carolina in 2025 NCAA title game, met the standard

“It’s been a story of resilience, of gratitude, of adversity, of overcoming adversity, just responding to life’s challenges and trying to fuel them to make me a better person, a better player, and continue to grow in my leadership abilities and being a great teammate and just staying who I am,” Bueckers said at the podium, a championship hat on her head and a net around her neck. “Standing firm in who I am and believing in what we do here as individuals, what we do here as a team. And just an overwhelming sense of gratitude for everything that’s happened through the ups and downs, I wouldn’t trade it for the world.”

Both teams entered the title game top ten in both offensive and defensive efficiency, but the former held form early on. Connecticut shot 58.3% by the first TV timeout, South Carolina 60%, each playing at a far faster pace than typical for the two programs.

But both defenses settled in during the latter stages of the first quarter. Particularly notable was the battle inside between South Carolina’s Chloe Kitts and Connecticut’s Sarah Strong, each forcing the other further away from the basket and into tougher shots as a result. Kitts made her first two shot attempts, but missed her next six by halftime.

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South Carolina manifested its edge on the boards as the second quarter began, grabbing the first six rebounds of the quarter. “They’ve gotten every rebound! Every one!” a frustrated Chris Dailey shouted at her team early in the quarter as South Carolina’s Tessa Johnson prepared to shoot a free throw on a foul drawn during a second chance in a possession.

Uncharacteristically, Connecticut found all of their points early on inside the arc, leading 29-22 at the under-5 timeout in the second quarter despite missing their first seven 3-point attempts. The Huskies hit 38.4% of their threes during the season.

A Tessa Johnson three chipped away at Connecticut’s biggest first-half lead of 11, but Ashlynn Shade promptly buried a corner three of her own to put the Huskies up, 36-26, at the half on the strength of their first triple of the game.

“It’s hard,” South Carolina head coach Dawn Staley said following the game. “They’re good. They’re good. They work well together. Super unselfish. They’re incredibly skilled. And the role players dagger you with the 3 — Shade in the corner. So you’ve got to have a really good day in order for you to beat them.

A change in emphasis on what constitutes a foul, along with some questionable execution, slowed the offensive pace down in the third quarter. “Call it the first time,” a visibly upset Staley yelled at the officials, shortly after a touch foul the previous posession sent Connecticut’s center Jana El Alfy to the bench with her fourth foul.

But Azzi Fudd remained blissfully unaffected, getting to the basket against the Gamecocks for 8 points in the first five minutes of the third quarter alone, and Sarah Strong, who’d corralled 11 rebounds by halftime, reached double-double status shortly thereafter. The Huskies, still with a single 3-pointer, extended their lead to 48-33. Fudd finished with 11 points in the quarter — the most by any Connecticut player in a single quarter of a title game — and 24 for the game en route to earning Most Outstanding Player honors.

“I think going into the third quarter, we knew we had a good lead,” Fudd said from the podium when it was over. “We played a great first half. We wanted to continue that. We didn’t want to let them back in the game. I think all of our mindset was just to be aggressive, stay locked in, stay disciplined, stay together. And that’s exactly what we did. I happened to score 11 points, but I was doing what my teammates, what the game was giving and how my teammates got me the ball.”

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Milaysia Fulwiley fought furiously to keep South Carolina in the game, giving the Gamecocks a spark with a driving layup at one end, followed by a block, then a steal and an assist, feeding Sania Feagin as she filled the lane to cut the Connecticut lead to 50-39 with 3:12 left in the third and forcing Geno Auriemma to call a timeout.

And then came the trinity. Fudd buried a three, then Strong did the same. Bueckers and Strong were relentless defending Kitts, forcing a miss, and Bueckers’ followed with an offensive rebound at the other end, drawing a foul and knocking down a pair of free throws. After Bueckers’ defense forced another miss and a drawn foul, even Auriemma himself applauded his signature star as she got back up. A 12-3 run to end the third put Connecticut up 20 and their fans into a celebratory mood.

It got no closer in the fourth quarter, the champions asserting dominance in a way not seen by any team since, well, Connecticut of the Breanna Stewart days. Even the once-significant edge for South Carolina on the boards disappeared, the Huskies racing to every loose ball. The lead ballooned north of 30 at the under-5 timeout, Jonathan the Husky danced, KK Arnold’s teammates shoved her playfully, and Auriemma and Dailey exchanged laughing comments to one another, relaxed long before the final buzzer.

And when it came, the suffering of Connecticut fans — 3,288 days without a title, forced to live with a paltry seven Final Fours in the eight played since their 2016 title, a mere 294-31 record in that time — was finally extinguished. These Huskies didn’t simply meet the standard. They overpowered it.

“You don’t prepare speeches for something like this,” Auriemma told reporters after the game. “Although, today I was thinking, ‘Man, what am I going to say if things don’t go our way?’ How can you describe the emotions that you would feel if it went the wrong way for us when there’s so much riding on this game for a lot of people, a lot of people at UConn and mostly for Paige being her last opportunity to do this?

“So I just kept thinking something good has to happen because if we were going to lose it would have been before now. I don’t think the basketball gods would take us all the way to the end — they’ve been really cruel with some of the kids on this team. They’ve suffered a lot of the things that could go wrong in their college careers as an athlete. So they don’t need anymore heartbreak. So they weren’t going to take us here and give us more heartbreak. I kept holding on to that.

I’m glad they were rewarded. This is one of the most emotional Final Fours and emotional national championships I’ve been a part of since that very first one.”