By Dorothy J. Gentry
Sports Editor
The No. 1 ranked South Carolina Gamecocks basketball team won the NCAA Women’s Championship Sunday night after defeating No. 2 ranked UCONN 64-49 in Minneapolis, site of the Final Four.
It was the 2nd national championship for the Gamecocks who won their first in 2017, both under Head Coach Dawn Staley who made history by becoming the first Black coach to win multiple Division I basketball national championships. The Hall-of-Famer is also just the sixth head coach in women’s NCAA tournament history to win more than one national championship.
“Our path was divinely ordered,” Staley said after the victory. “I mean, this journey of being a coach has been truly gratifying. I have to reflect on this part of it. Like it comes with a great deal of pressure, pressure because we were the No. 1 team in the country throughout the entire season, pressure to come into the NCAA Tournament and be the favorites, by most people not all. Certainly not who we went up against today. I think that changed the narrative a little bit because of the success that UConn has had in our tournament.
“I felt a great deal of pressure to win because I’m a Black coach. Because if we don’t win, then you bring in so many other — just scrutiny. Like you can’t coach, you had enough to get it done but yet you failed,” Staley continued. “You feel all of that, and you feel it probably 10 times more than anyone else because we’re at this platform.”
Aliyah Boston, the NCAAW’s National Player of the Year, was named the Final Four’s Most Outstanding Player after averaging 17 points, 17 rebounds, 3.5 assists and 1.5 blocks per game in Minneapolis. She recorded her 30th double-double of the season in the championship game with 11 points and 16 rebounds.
South Carolina finished the season with a 35-2 record and were the 12th team to go wire to wire as No. 1 in the Associated Press poll all season long and then win it all.
Destanni Henderson scored a career-high 26 points and the Gamecocks handed Geno Auriemma’s Huskies their first loss in 12 NCAA title games.
Photos by South Carolina Athletics and Dorothy J. Gentry
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