Above: Aari McDonald, left, hugs other teammates as the Arizona Wildcats defeated UConn to advance to the NCAA Women’s National Championship game. –
The University of Arizona Women’s basketball team are giant killers, stunning the legendary University of Connecticut Huskies last night in a Final Four game.
The Arizona Daily Star reports, One win away: Wildcats stun No. 1 UConn 69-59, advance to national championship game:
During her team’s historic run through the NCAA Tournament and into the national sports consciousness, Aari McDonald has picked up more than a few adjectives.
Electric. Amazing. Lightning-quick. Cold-blooded. Fiery.
But best? That description was reserved for another player, a freshman from women’s college basketball’s biggest powerhouse, the AP Player of the Year and a first-team All-American.
UConn’s Paige Bueckers squared off against McDonald on Friday night with a spot in the national championship game on the line, and she saw first-hand just how good Arizona’s star is.
Highlights from Arizona Wildcats.
McDonald scored 26 points and hit 4 of 9 3-pointers, and the Wildcats emphatically punched their way into Sunday’s title game with a 69-59 win over the Huskies at the Alamodone.
The third-seeded Wildcats will take on top-seeded Stanford for the national championship. The all-Pac-12 final starts at 3 p.m. and will air on ESPN. The Cardinal advanced with a tension-filled victory over South Carolina earlier Friday in a battle of top seeds.
“We just believed,” McDonald told ESPN after the game. “We worked hard to get here.”
Added coach Adia Barnes: “We believed. Our team believed. We were going to Bear Down and fight.”
The UA-UConn game was, by comparison, a breeze. Despite being installed as 13-point underdogs, the Wildcats led by six points at the end of the first quarter, 10 at halftime and nine at the end of the third.
UConn cut the UA’s lead to 58-52 with 1:35 remaining, but then fouled McDonald — who hit two free throws to put the Wildcats back up by eight. Bueckers hit a deep 3-point to make it a five-point game with 1:25 left. The Huskies fouled Sam Thomas, Arizona’s 86% free-throw shooter, who hit two free throws.
UConn never led.
Arizona shot its way to the biggest win in program history, blowing past the program — and the player — that was viewed by many as the best in the sport. Bueckers entered Friday’s game averaging 20.1 points, 5.9 assists and 4.8 rebounds per game.
Friday, she was outdueled by McDonald — a second-team All-American, according to both the AP and USBWA.
The UA star drained her first shot attempt, a 3 from the wing, to give the Wildcats a quick lead. After Cate Reese and Trinity Baptiste missed shots on back-to-back possessions, Sam Thomas drilled a 3, making it 6-0 with 7:20 left.
Bueckers responded with a 3-pointer of her own, but then McDonald hit another triple. Bueckers finished with 18 points on 5 of 13 shooting, and added four rebounds and six assists. Dogged by the most relentless defense in college basketball, UConn shot just 37% from the field.
Reese opened the second quarter with a basket, then the Wildcats took a charge and Reese hit a contested runner, giving the Wildcats a 10-point lead.
McDonald scored 15 first-half points, 12 of them coming on 3-pointers.
Perhaps Friday’s result shouldn’t have been a surprise. After all, Arizona’s hot shooting has carried it throughout the NCAA Tournament.
The Wildcats averaged 8.8 3-pointers per game during their first four tourney games, a full three more per game than their regular-season average. They shot 43% from 3 in San Antonio before Friday, 11% better than their season-long mark.
UConn hit just 1 of 3 3-point attempts in the first half, and finished 5 of 12.
McDonald didn’t score her first points of the second half until there was 2:12 remaining. Not that the Wildcats were necessarily worse for it: Her two free throws gave Arizona a 12-point lead, two more than their halftime advantage.
Helena Pueyo hit a 3-pointer with 1:29 left in the quarter, extending UConn’s deficit to a season-high 14-points.
In the span of two weeks, the Wildcats proved they belonged.
The UA boat-raced Stony Brook in the first round, then persevered in a physical showdown against BYU to advance to the Sweet 16. McDonald scored 31 points in a 15-point win over second-seeded Texas A&M, then put up 33 as the Wildcats beat fourth-seeded Indiana by 13.
Up next in Arizona’s magical season: Stanford, which beat the Wildcats by 27 points and 14 points in the teams’ two regular-season games. Since the day of their last meeting — a 62-48 Stanford win on Feb. 22 — the Wildcats are 6-2.
No win was bigger than Friday’s. Except the next win.
The Stanford Cardinal are also a legendary women’s basketball program. These teams are all too familiar with one other in PAC-12 play. It is difficult to beat the same team thee times in a season, so Stanford should not be ordering another championship banner for Maples Pavilion just yet. The Arizona Lady Cats will have to play their best game of the season to continue their historic run as giant killers in the NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament.
Bring home a national championship, Lady Cats! You can do this. Big “Mo” is on your side after stunning UConn. You are giant killers. The “one shining moment” video for the NCAA Tournament will feature you if you can find it within yourselves to dial up one more magical win.
UPDATE: Arizona women’s basketball coach Adia Barnes apparently made waves after her team’s 69-59 win over UConn in the women’s Final Four on Friday night when she was caught on camera using two middle fingers and appearing to utter an expletive.
CBS Sports’ Gary Parrish had tweeted: “Shame on anybody who tries to make Adia Barnes apologize for telling the skeptics to F themselves. That’s a great moment.”
Coach Barnes tweeted in response:
Gary,
😂I was so pumped up it was the heat of the moment and it was supposed to be a private moment with my team! I told them WE BELIEVED IN US!FORGET🤪EVERYONE THAT DIDN’T, I WILL GO TO WAR WITH U ANYTIME ANY PLACE!! Not the best look but I was loving on my team. 😊 https://t.co/hLsxvIFWKq— ADIA BARNES COPPA (@AdiaBarnes) April 3, 2021
On Saturday, Barnes said she didn’t think she needed to apologize for the incident.
“I honestly had a moment with my team, and I thought it was a more intimate huddle,” she told reporters. “I said to my team something that I truly felt and I know they felt, and it just appeared different on TV, but I’m not apologizing for it because I don’t feel like I need to apologize. It’s what I felt with my team at the moment. I wouldn’t take it back. We’ve gone to war together. We believe in each other. So I’m in those moments, and that’s how I am, so I don’t apologize for doing that. I’m just me, and I have to just be me.”
The Wildcats continue to be underestimated in early odds for the title game against Stanford.
Here’s hoping coach Barnes can fire up her middle fingers again after Sunday’s championship game to all the skeptical “East coast bias” sports reporters and the NCAA who have underestimated this team all season long and have snubbed the Wildcats in the Tournament as if they are a Cinderella team that doesn’t belong in the big dance with UConn and Stanford and South Carolina. Prove the skeptics wrong. The Wildcats’ time has come for a statement game: “We have arrived, and we are the new champions of women’s college basketball.”
BTW, you should have seen and heard the coaches I had when I was playing sports. This is a nothingburger by way of comparison.
Lady Cats. Enough with this Lady Cats appellation. They are the Wildcats. It’s not like the reader can confuse them with any other Arizona Wildcats currently in a national championship game. Unless you want to start calling the men’s team the Gentlemen Cats, let’s just call a Wildcat a Wildcat. It is the 21st century.
This checks out.
Old habits die hard, but Wildcat is indeed a Wildcat.
Instead of celebrating their big win, that’s all you get out of this? Sports writers have been using this descriptor for years.
“Can’t you just be happy with the win?” Isn’t that a classic way to deflect a comment about the inequity in referring to the men’s and women’s team? And for the record, I am a season ticket holder x25 yrs and yes, I am happy with the win. My initial comment stands.
In any one game there is no such thing as an upset. There is only incorrect seeding.