With a 70-52 win over the Notre Dame Fighting Irish, the UConn Huskies will go to their 25th Final Four.
” I don’t know that there’s a perfect answer or a perfect way, but it’s always really hard,” Huskies head coach Geno Auriemma said. I’ve said this for countless years. It’s always the hardest game there is to play. It’s so hard to get to the Final Four. You always have to beat a really, really good team at this stage of the game, and certainly, you know, we played a really, really good team. But I’m really proud of our players and how we managed to flip the switch a little bit each game, come out in the second half, and take what we learned in the first half. We did that today. Really, really proud of my players.”
Both teams got off to a slow start. When Blanca Quinonez came to the Huskies, UConn started playing better. Quinonez scored 12 points off the bench, as the Huskies took a 20-11 lead into the second quarter.
“As always, I just try to bring something to the court, impact the game, as Coach says,” Quinonez said of her first-quarter performance. “I think everyone was locked in, and I think everybody was ready to play that game. I go there and do my best for the team.
In the second quarter, Notre Dame outscored UConn 14-12. After a slow start, Notre Dame’s Hannah Hidalgo scored nine points in the quarter. At halftime, UConn was shooting 50% while Notre Dame was at 37%, but the Fighting Irish were only down by seven, 32-25.
Both teams struggled to start the second half, with UConn shooting 29.4% and Notre Dame 33%.3%. Both teams had scoring droughts of over 3 minutes. The Huskies did manage to outscore the Fighting Irish 15-11, with Sarah Strong leading the way with five points. Hidalgo led the way for Notre Dame with eight.
Both teams picked up their scoring a bit in the fourth quarter, with UConn outscoring Notre Dame 23-16. Strong led the way for the Huskies with 10 points, followed by Quinonez with 6 points, and Azzi Fudd added 7 points.
UConn shot 44.4% from the field, while Notre Dame shot 39.1%. UConn also outrebounded Notre Dame 35-29 and scored 19 points off turnovers.
The Huskies got 32 points from their bench, and the bench also played well on defense.
It’s super important,” Strong said about bench depth. “I feel like no other team has a bench like us. We can have anyone off the bench step up and change the whole pace of the game. I mean, yeah, Jana, Blanca, and Heckel did a great job coming in and playing their roles on the boards; Blanca with a little bit of everything. Heckel with defense, that’s what they do, and I’m very happy to have them.”
Strong, who was named Most Outstanding Player, led the Huskies in scoring with 21 points, with 15 coming in the second half. She also added seven rebounds. Quinonez was a game-changer for UConn with 21 points off the bench on 7-12 shooting from the field and 4-8 from three-point land. Fudd shot 5-12 from the field and scored 13 points.
“I mean, we don’t take it lightly getting to the Final Four, Fudd said on returning to the Final Four. “Obviously, as Blanca said earlier, we still have work we need to do, things to clean up going forward. We’re definitely going to enjoy this, appreciate just what we’ve done so far this season, and then get to work.”
Hidalgo scored 22 points for the Fighting Irish and added 11 rebounds. She was the only player to score in double figures for Notre Dame. Hard to beat the No.1 team in the nation with one player scoring in double figures.
“Not one of the best. She is the best,” Auriemma speaking about Hidalgo being the best point guard in the country. “For you know, for people that are not familiar with South Jersey, that’s just Philadelphia East, right? So she’s got a bit of that toughness and grit, as you said, and talent. It’s rare. You rarely find a player that is involved in every single play to the point where, like, you have to — whoever she’s guarding, you have to hide them someplace hoping that she’s not involved in that play, and she still manages to be involved in the play somehow, some way.
Not only can she get wherever she wants to go and get any shot she wants, but she also probably causes more problems for your offense than any player in the country. I mean, you can deal with a shot blocker. You can deal with that, but you cannot deal with someone who, every time you’re dribbling the ball, you’re more worried about where she is than who you are passing it to. I just love watching her. I asked her after the game if she was old enough to go pro, and she said, no, I want one more shot at you guys.
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