Five Takeaways from UConn's National Championship Victory over South Carolina

Paige gets her ring, Geno makes it a dozen and South Carolina's questions heading into next year...

Well, there you have it folks.

UConn defeated South Carolina 82-59 in the NCAA Women’s Basketball National Championship to win the program’s 12th all time, all under head coach Geno Auriemmma. Paige Bueckers, in her swan song performance with Huskies women’s basketball, wins a title at last as Sarah Strong asserts herself as the next star of the sport.

Be sure to follow us on all our social media handles, where we have a boatload of Final Four and Title Game content up in Tampa and have more to come. In the meantime, enjoy our last video from the floor of Amalie Arena. A bet was made and a bet was paid as Greer adorns Chauny with a UConn jacket courtesy of our friends at Homefield. They’ve also got exclusive national title merch at homefield.com and you can use the code NOCAP15 for 15% off your first order.

Now, the takeaways from a national title game…

1. Paige Bueckers gets her moment, at long last…

There was really something heartwarming about the embrace shared by Geno Auriemma and Paige Bueckers as she stepped off the floor for the last time. You could tell, and almost see if you looked at the TV hard enough, all the weight of four years of criticism start to dissolve off her shoulders. After years on injuries, of critique about passivity in big games and the losses to ascending power programs like South Carolina, Paige finally has gotten hers.

It bookends the greatest recruiting classes in women’s basketball history and maybe one of the greatest classes in all of sports history. The top five players in the 2020 class were Paige Bueckers, Kamilla Cardoso, Angel Reese, Cameron Brink and Caitlin Clark.

Four of those players won an NCAA title and the other set the all-time college scoring records for men or women. Not too shabby.

For Paige to be the last of the group to be in college and to win a title feels like a really nice way to cap this off. When those five entered college, Paige was the anointed one. She was supposed to be the GOAT and the next generational superstar. While she dealt with injuries to herself and her teammates, the other four players staked their claims and eventually headed to the WNBA last season. Paige wanted one more shot and, at long last, managed to get it. Now she heads off to the league to join them.

Hats off to one hell of a career.

2. Sarah Strong is the next star of women’s basketball.

I don’t want to write all this without mentioning Azzi Fudd. In both matchups against South Carolina, the people’s princess was the one who the Gamecocks had nothing for. While Raven Johnson drew the Paige assignment, Azzi basically took one of Bree Hall, Te-Hina PaoPao or MiLaysia Fulwiley and took them through Dante’s Inferno, one circle of hell at a time. She deserved the Most Outstanding Player honors and deserves a shout for her performance this year and this March/April.

But make no mistake, the future of this UConn team and the future of the sport, is Sarah Strong. I know some folks bristle at the notion of comparing women’s basketball players to the men but sometimes there aren’t really accurate comps. I see a lot of Alyssa Thomas in Sarah Strong until you realize that Sarah can score at all three levels as just a freshman. She may not have the wow factor in her passing ability yet but the only real person I see her as is a Nikola Jokic type. She’s effectively a point forward who can run and dictate the offense out of the post, who can space the floor and shoot the three as well as work down low and not be afraid of physicality. Her 24 point, 15 rebound performance was one of the best I’ve seen from a big in a long time and we’ve had more than a few sensational performances in the last decade. To be honest, the only real historical analog I can think of in the women’s game is…maybe Lauren Jackson? But she might even be a better passer or at least become one.

It was pretty amazing watching her work on Sunday afternoon and I have a feeling that damn near everyone took notice. Let’s just stop with the “can she play in the WNBA now?” stuff. She can’t. The physicality chasm between younger college players and the pros is wide and honestly, let’s enjoy what we’re getting for the next few years. Because between Strong, Joyce Edwards and another Jokic-type big in Sienna Betts coming to the college game next year, we have some potentially generational bigs coming after a couple recruiting classes filled with elite guards. In short, the game is in a great place right now.

3. Geno Auriemma’s still got it and UConn is still UConn…

For all the gruff and grump that Geno Auriemma can give off, the embrace with Paige reminded me of something: his players absolutely love him. As I was watching that I thought back to the videos Nika Muhl did with the team last year and how much she held Geno in high regard. For all the criticism that gets thrown his way, it’s very clear that his players would die for him and that he’s been able to adjust, even as one of the last old school dudes, to a new generation of athlete that has forced more than a couple legends to retire.

It shows that the old dog can learn new tricks and that Geno has still got it. For the first time in four or so years, the roster was fully healthy and it showed. The tough love he’s given to Paige Bueckers over the years was tempered with tenderness in her final moments as a UConn Husky. In short, the GOAT showed you why he’s still the GOAT, even as Dawn Staley gets closer over time.

I was extremely impressed with how he coached in this game too. Jana El Alfy ended up with four fouls by the third quarter and he managed to get Ice Brady in to give them some good minutes. Defensively, they managed to suffocate the Gamecock guards and won the frontcourt battle decisively. Who knows what the future holds for Geno in the next few years but I bet he’s still got a couple seasons left in him. Sarah Strong is his centerpiece, after all.

4. South Carolina doesn’t have to change much…yet.

Personally, I don’t think that South Carolina has to change very much. The Gamecocks clearly missed Ashlyn Watkins and while Dawn Staley was able to coach her team through that very clear interior deficiency, it shows when you run up on a team that is just more talented at certain positions. Watkins is an elite interior presence even if she isn’t a dynamic scorer and her presence was a part of what could unlock the perimeter shooting that South Carolina has. Last year, you watched teams sell out and load the paint to stop Kamilla Cardoso and Watkins which left shooters open all over the place. When they wouldn’t hit shots, the two bigs would be able to get the ball and just reset the offense again.

This year, as valiant of an effort as Sania Feagin made, there was a hole there. Maryam Dauda and Sakima Walker weren’t solutions against elite teams, Joyce Edwards is young and that is just not Chloe Kitts’ natural position in spite of her success there. Raven Johnson, as much as I do believe that she will have a place on a WNBA roster, isn’t an offense first guard. To me, her pro comp as a player is DiDi Richards: an elite defender and energy rebounder who will always have a place to play at the pro level off that basis. So you’re left with players like Tessa Johnson and Te-Hina PaoPao who are at their best when allowed to be more spot up three point shooters. But without the extra effort going to the post players, their job gets a bit harder on the perimeter.

Which brings us to MiLaysia Fulwiley.

I’ll be honest, I didn’t read the Sports Illustrated story the way a lot of FAMs did. I understood what they were trying to accomplish and that the coaches see a process with her greatness. But it felt like that piece opened her and the team up to substantial criticism right as the biggest games of the year were coming. There was a particularly damning quote in there that concerned her seemingly hitting a mental block in games after succeeding in practices. I’m not in the locker room nor am I in the coaches office, so this is an outside-in view. But it feels like a player who has an instinctual feel for the game is being asked to be a little more cerebral. On the surface, it makes a lot of sense especially for the type of system Staley runs. Does that, however, lead to a player overthinking things? Pressing in a game and feeling sped up because she’s focusing on what she’s supposed to think instead of how instinct would normally guide her?

It’s something that can continue to be worked on with the coaches if she trusts the process and, by all accounts, she does. All one can do is take her public statements at face value and while I know there are women’s basketball fans that just want to see her cook and entertain, if she believes that South Carolina is the best place for her and she trusts their vision, who are we to tell her she’s wrong? It’s her life at the end of the day. In the same vein, I’m curious how Staley approaches the offseason with her as Raven Johnson’s WNBA Draft decision looms large. Again, Fulwiley is an electric and game-changing offensive player who very clearly commands the attention of everyone watching the floor. Is there a middle ground where the instinct and the request to maybe think a bit more can match up? I hope so. Because it would suck to see one of the games most exciting young talents be in a mental rut that lasts beyond this title matchup.

5. The sky isn’t falling in Columbia. It just means the Gamecocks are now in the Blue Blood tier.

Listen, these are GOAT talks. When you are the program of the moment, a true Blue Blood, you are judged on a different scale. New Bloods get a different treatment. Every year they’re underdogs or folks will believe it when they see it. You aren’t actually expected to win titles every year when you first hit the scene. That’s what the blue bloods do.

For South Carolina fans, I think this has been a strange year. Because even though they still may seem themselves as the disruptors of the game in a system that used to center UConn, Notre Dame and Tennessee, the reality is different to casuals in the women’s basketball world. There are two Blue Bloods now: the Huskies and the Gamecocks and they will be judged accordingly.

The margins are small between making Final Fours and winning national titles and it’s preposterous to expect someone to win a championship every year. But you know what? That’s how we talk about Blue Bloods. It’s how the media talked about Lebron’s teams when he was in his prime. It’s how we discuss Duke or UNC men’s basketball or Alabama football. Although fans of South Carolina may see that heightened sense of expectation as an extension of long simmering hatred towards Staley, the school or the fanbase, the reality is that they are just in a different tier within the sport than anyone else. You have a lot of fans and a lot of haters and command the attention of the game in ways few others can. I have more on *how* S.C. is covered in Five Out on Monday morning but the fact of the matter is that when you reach a level of being the standard, this is how you will be discussed.

Heavy is the head that wears the crown, after all…