For a while Tuesday night it looked like the University of Connecticut women’s basketball team could be in some trouble, but to no avail, these Huskies were just too good.
During the first half they looked more like a team that hadn’t won in a long time.
It certainly wasn’t against fellow No. 1 seed Stanford, but the Huskies did win a second consecutive national championship, the program’s seventh overall.
The 53-47 final score made this the lowest combined total in the 29-year history of the NCAA title game.
For the Huskies the first half was as ugly as it could get. Stanford led 20-12, holding the Huskies to their lowest first-half total in program history.
The Huskies kept their defense just as tough but found some offense in the second half.
This wasn’t one of their sledgehammer games where the opponent is pummeled and beaten to a pulp. This was more like climbing up a sheer rock face without a rope–doing it with sheer strength alone.
Winning 78 games in a row has never been as easy as the Huskies have often made it appear. But winning this particular game really was just as hard as it looked.
That is indeed how the Huskies treated it this season, as they broke the women’s NCAA Division I record 70-game win streak that UConn had set from 2001-03 and became the first D-I women’s basketball team to put together back-to-back perfect seasons.
Moore, who was the Final Four’s most outstanding player with 23 points and 11 rebounds Tuesday, now has a chance to join Taurasi and Tennessee’s Chamique Holdsclaw as legendary college players to win three titles in a row.
But that will take Moore doing it next season without Greene or fellow All-American Tina Charles, who concluded their UConn careers with this championship.
With four more victories, the Huskies would break the women’s all-division record of 81 in a row, set by Washington University in 1998-2001.
Then there is the hallowed all-time NCAA Division I mark for men and women of 88 straight that was set from 1971-74 by UCLA’s men.