UConn prepared for the intensity of a 2022 title game rematch

Since that game, UConn has been the best team in the nation and gone on nothing short of an absolute tear. Just 10 days after that loss in Knoxville, the Huskies decimated South Carolina — the team they’ll face in Sunday’s NCAA Tournament national championship game — by 29 points, snapping the Gamecocks’ 71-game winning streak.

“We came out of that [Tennessee] game and took all those things and went home,” UConn head coach Geno Auriemma told reporters on Saturday. “And the team was really, really ready and receptive to these are the changes that have to be made. We have to be better defensively at these areas. And we have to execute better offensively in these areas. We have to be tougher in these areas.

“So you play games like that because you want to find those things out, and that was a huge, huge benefit for us. And we have players that want to get better every day, and that was the impetus that we needed that particular game.”

Including a huge win over the Gamecocks in February, the Huskies have averaged a 32.8 point margin of victory, breezed through the remainder of the BIG EAST regular and postseason, and have been on a dominant run in the NCAA Tournament, including a 34-point win — the largest margin of victory in Final Four history — over No. 1 overall seed UCLA on Friday night.

Sunday’s matchup between UConn and South Carolina, a team that is competing in its fifth consecutive Final Four, is a rematch of the 2022 national championship which the Gamecocks won handily, 64-49. Since Dawn Staley took over as South Carolina’s head coach in 2008, the program has steadily ascended, reaching its first Final Four in 2015 — incidentally, also played at Amalie Arena in Tampa, this season’s venue.

“A lot of respect for them, the program, Coach Dawn,” Bueckers told reporters about the matchup. “Sustained excellence is extremely hard, especially with the parity in women’s basketball today. So for them to continue to get back to this level, we know as players, is extremely hard to get here. You never want to take it for granted.”

UConn vs. South Carolina is a compelling matchup because of the paths that both programs have traversed to get here. Auriemma and UConn reached their first Final Four in 1991, the same Final Four that Dawn Staley competed in as a player from Virginia. UConn won its second national title in 2000, when Dawn Staley accepted her first head coaching job — while still competing in the WNBA — at Temple University in her hometown of Philadelphia.

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By the time Staley took over in Columbia, UConn and Pat Summitt’s Tennessee had firmly established themselves as the standard bearers of the sport, winning a combined six national titles between 2000-08. Those programs were the ones all programs were chasing. In just seven seasons, Staley took her program from the bottom of the SEC to the top of the nation, ultimately getting the Gamecocks to their first Final Four in 2015. Since then, South Carolina has reached the Final Four eight times and won three national titles (2017, 2022, 2024).

“It’s hard to break into what Pat Summitt and Geno, what they’ve done in the time that they’ve served our game. Like, it’s really hard to even be mentioned in that air,” Staley told reporters. “But, I mean, we’ve been uncommonly fortunate because I do think we give hope to other programs that are up and coming to know that you can break in. You can break in.”

While Geno and Dawn’s coaching careers, which have both diverged and converged over the past three decades, is one fascinating narrative out of Sunday’s matchup, it’s not necessarily the primary one. Sure, both coaches want to add another championship to their cases — for Auriemma an 12th, and for Staley a fourth. The predominant story, however, is centered on UConn’s Bueckers who, in a collegiate career that included the devastating lows of a major injury, has now accomplished almost every accolade except for winning a national championship.

“If we win a 12th national championship, I don’t know that that has any impact on my life whatsoever other than it makes me feel that I’m still able to have an impact at my age and for how long I’ve been doing it. So it doesn’t impact my life that much,” Auriemma told reporters.

“But it certainly impacts [Paige’s] life and what she wants and what she’s been dreaming about since she picked up a basketball. So anytime you can have a hand helping someone who, when you were talking to them when they were 17 years old, about what could happen if you come to UConn and you’re in a position to actually be able to do it, I think that’s the most gratifying thing for me at this stage in my life.”

Of course, Bueckers’ ultimate goal is to leave Storrs with a ring. She came to UConn to win a national championship, and has been driven each season by that pursuit. On Sunday, for the last time, she’ll put on a UConn jersey with a chance to accomplish just that. The question is — does she need to win the season’s final game to cement her legacy among the Husky greats?

“I don’t think that’s up to me,” Bueckers said. “I think that’s up to the people who, I guess, get to decide if people’s legacies are cemented or whatever. But I’m not worried about that at all. The thing I take great joy and great pride in is the relationships, the experiences, the journeys we’ve gone on throughout the team. … The journey is the reward for me. And I never take it for granted, being able to play here and put on this uniform.”

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