MINNEAPOLIS — No. 2 seed UConn defeated No. 1 seed and defending national champion Stanford 63-58 in the national semifinal matchup to advance to the program’s first national title match since 2016.
The Huskies will face top-seeded South Carolina, which has been the highest-ranked team all season and beat UConn 73-57 on November 22, for the national title on Sunday at 8 pm ET on ESPN3.
UConn is 11-0 in the national title game in program history. The Huskies, whose last national title was in 2016, are looking to avoid their longest streak without a national title since winning their first in 1995.
Stanford hoped to become the fourth team in NCAA Tournament history to repeat as national champions, joining USC, UConn and Tennessee.
Sophomore Paige Bueckers and fourth-year redshirt Evina Westbrook led the Huskies with 14 and 12 points, respectively.
Stanford cut UConn’s eight-point lead to two with 1:26 remaining, but fourth-year Christyn Williams made a pair of free throws with 11 seconds left, and sophomore Aaliyah Edwards added one more with four seconds left to play, to seal the victory.
The match featured a matchup between the sport’s winningest coaches, who have 2,306 combined wins, and was the fifth meeting in the national semifinals between the two programs.
UConn was charged almost twice as many fouls as Stanford in the first half; Edwards and rookie Azzi Fudd played just eight and 11 minutes, respectively, in that span after drawing two fouls.
Fourth-year Olivia Nelson-Ododa, the only Huskies big player left after graduate student Dorka Juhasz sat out with a season-ending wrist injury in the Elite Eight, was forced to keep playing even with his own two fouls.
Stanford failed to take advantage, holding the lead by just 34 seconds in the first 20 minutes. After a back-and-forth first 30 minutes in which UConn went on to win by six and Stanford by one, UConn extended their margin to eight early in the fourth and once again by that total by missing 1.26 after two free throws from Edwards.
Although UConn would convert from the line when fouled, some turnovers allowed Stanford’s Lacie Hull and Ashten Prechtel to hit huge 3-pointers to cut the deficit to four with 27.1 left and then two with 18.4 seconds left after a Brink’s layup before Williams’ free throws sealed the game.
