Connecticut roars back to beat Baylor and advance to 13th straight Final Four
DiJonai Carrington drove across the court from right to left before pulling up for a midrange jump shot with the opportunity for a buzzer beater to send defending national champion Baylor back to the Final Four. The shot was off the mark as a pair of Connecticut defenders contested her effort. Carrington looked up from the floor afterward, waiting for a foul, but the whistle didn’t come.
Replays showed contact, but it was the Huskies celebrating in the end, leaving Baylor Coach Kim Mulkey extremely frustrated.
“You don’t need a quote from me,” Mulkey said. “I’ve got still shots and video from two angles. One kid hits her in the face, and one kid hits her on the elbow.
“It doesn’t matter, ‘Oh, we missed a call.’ It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter what you write. It doesn’t matter what I say. It doesn’t matter what we saw. It doesn’t matter what we think. Life goes on.”
Baylor used a late 12-4 run to cut the lead to one, and Christyn Williams missed two free throws with 17.2 seconds remaining and Connecticut leading 68-67. That set up the final play that had Twitter buzzing about the no-call, with even LeBron James tweeting that it was a foul.
Connecticut Coach Geno Auriemma didn’t care.
“I don’t know; I haven’t seen it,” Auriemma said. “But I’d also like to look at all the fouls in the first half where they shot 11 free throws and we shot two. So I don’t think I’m going to go back and check all those, and I’m not going back to check on the last one. A call’s a call, and you’ve got to live with it.
“I probably doubt that in [James’s] career that he’s ever won a game and decided to give it back because he looked at it and went, ‘That was a foul.’ … Bottom line is the officials did what they’re going to do. … It is what it is. I’m not going to sit here and apologize for it.”
Huskies freshman Paige Bueckers scored a game-high 28 points. Williams finished with 21 points and seven rebounds, and Evina Westbrook added 11 points and six rebounds.
Carrington led Baylor with 22 points. NaLyssa Smith had 14 points and 13 rebounds, and Moon Ursin chipped in 13 points and six rebounds.
Connecticut, the winner of four national titles since 2013, jumped to a 16-4 lead highlighted by a Bueckers three-pointer that forced Baylor to take an early timeout. Bueckers, the first player to be named Big East player of the year, freshman of the year and conference tournament most outstanding player in the same season, let out a primal scream afterward that let everyone in the building understand the stakes.
“It’s crazy to be a part of this history,” Bueckers said. “We were talking about it in the locker room. I think Coach said it was 13 straight years that they’ve been to the Final Four. And I was about 6 when that streak started. And just to be a part of that history, that’s really why I came here — just because of the unspoken success that they’ve had over the years and just all the winning that they’ve done.”
Mulkey got her team back on track after Connecticut’s fast start, and the Bears scored 10 straight as the defensive intensity picked up and Baylor got out in transition for some easy baskets. A steal and a layup by Smith, the Big 12 player of the year, cut the lead to 26-24 at the end of a first quarter in which even the spectators were left a bit breathless.
The teams went back and forth in a second quarter that felt more physical on the defensive end as Baylor made life difficult with its rim protection. On top of that, the Huskies were a little sloppy with the ball. Connecticut shot 48.4 percent from the field in the first half, but eight turnovers took away chances to extend any lead.
Baylor closed the half on a 5-0 run, including a Carrington offensive rebound putback for a 39-37 lead at halftime.
The Bears seemed to take control with a 53-44 lead in the third quarter after a pair of Smith buckets. But Bueckers and the Huskies flipped a switch and closed the quarter with an 8-0 run that turned into a 19-0 surge; Connecticut scored the first 11 points of the fourth quarter to take a 64-55 lead, and Mulkey didn’t use a timeout to stem the run. Bueckers scored 10 points in that stretch as she continued to show why she’s the most talked-about player in women’s basketball.
Baylor guard DiDi Richards, one of the top defenders in the nation, suffered a hamstring injury in the third quarter and had to leave the game shortly before the Huskies went on their run. She attempted to return but couldn’t finish the game, and Mulkey called that the difference.
“That was tough for us,” Carrington said. “We just tried to weather the storm. We’ve always had things thrown at us this whole season and just had to play through them and battle. That’s what we did. We never gave up. We never thought we were out of it.”
