NEW ORLEANS–South Carolina’s 6-4 national Player of the Year Aliyah Boston waited a year for redemption.
The memories of last year’s 66-65 national semi-final loss to Stanford are still fresh in her mind. Boston missed what could have been a game winning putback just before the buzzer against the Cardinal and left the floor in tears.
She was crying again in Minneapolis Friday night. But they were tears of joy. Boston was the dominant force– scoring 23 points, grabbing 18 rebounds and contributing four assists– as the Gamecocks defeated Louisville, 72-59, at the Target Center to advance to a national championship rematch against UConn Sunday night.
South Carolina (34-2), which has been ranked No. 1 since the start of the season and is the No. 1 overall seed, has already beaten the Huskies once this season, blowing them away, 73-57, in the championship of Battle 4 Atlantis in the Bahamas.
But UConn, which defeated defending champion Stanford, 63-58, in the second semi-final, has never lost a title game, winning all 11 times they played for women’s basketball’s ultimate prize. This is the first time since 2016 UConn will play for a championship.
“Thinking about last year coming into the season, we just knew we fell short,” Boston said. “But it’s not something we continued to think about because we knew this was a new team. We have a lot more depth, so we’ve just got to come to play every night,”
Boston does that. She has 27 consecutive double doubles and was an easy choice for consensus national Player of the Year and should be the dominant player on the floor as the Gamecocks, who won their first national championship in 2017, go after their second.
South Carolina, coached by Hall of Fame Olympic coach Dawn Staley, can be great, but they are not invincible, losing to Kentucky on a late three- point goal in the SEC championship game.
“I think we’ve had instances late in the season where we didn’t take care of business in the fourth quarter,” Staley said. “So, I know it’s in the back of the players’ minds.. It was in the back of my mind. And we were up I think nine going into the fourth quarter and I’m like, ‘Ok, here we go.’
“I think just with anything, life in general, it’s going to throw tests at you. You’re going to have to pass the tests or you’re going to have to retake them. I thought we’ve been puit in positions where we didn’t pass the test– like Kentucky– and they made us pay. And we had other instances in the tournament where we faced it, and we took it up to another level.”
South Carolina had no problem turning on the jets against Louisville. jumping out to an 11-2 lead and then controlling the rest of the game. Along the way, they limited Louisville guard Hailey Van Lith, who had scored 20 plus points in the fist four games of the tournament, to just nine.
“They did a really good job of making it hard for me to even get the ball,” Van Lith said. “They obviously were not going to let me get touches. They basically face-guarded me the whole game. I played a little passive, with their length I needed to get going earlier and be more aggressive, but they did a good job of executing their game plan with me.”
South Carolina guard Brea Bel was chiefly responsible for shutting down Van Lith. “I think it’s just a mentality to have every single game,” she said. “You just can’t turn it on and turn it off when you choose to. You just have to lock in and know what your job is.”
Beal finished with 12 points for the Gamecocks while Destanni Henderson had 11 and Victaria Sexton and Zia Cooke 10 apiece.
UConn (30-5), which had the program’s most regular season losses since 2004-05, is back after weathering the storm of mid-season injuries to stars Paige Buekers and Azzi Fudd, could be the first team since Baylor i 2005 to take down three No. 1 seeds on the way to winning the national title.
“Coming in, I don’t think we’re the best team here,” huskies’ coach Geno Auriemma said. “I don’t think we can win even if we play our A game. We need help. We need Stanford to not play their best game. We need them to miss shots they normally make. . . Fortunately, for us, Stanford didn’t have their best stuff and we made a couple big plays, and by some unknown miracle, we’re playing Sunday night.”
