South Carolina Crashes UConn Party, Set for UCLA Next

UConn looked historically dominant all season amid a 38–0 start, and Huskies star Sarah Strong received the greatest UConn women’s basketball player of all-time talk—before South Carolina (36–3) halted all of that with a stunning 62–48 victory over the Huskies on Friday in Phoenix for the NCAA Women’s Final Four.

UConn’s bid for back-to-back championships for a third consecutive decade has ended for now, and Strong’s legacy arguably can’t rise above the many other greats in Huskies lore who did win consecutive championships. 

“Yeah, I was never comfortable with that narrative, people talking like that going into the season, in the middle of the season,” Huskies head coach Geno Auriema told reporters afterward. “Trying to do that in today’s day and age, it’s always been difficult. Don’t get me wrong. I mean, we were an undefeated team one year.”

South Carolina unseated UConn with a plethora of players stepping up. Ta’Niya Latson led the way with a double-double of 16 points and 11 rebounds, and Joyce Edwards came close to a double-double with 11 points and eight rebounds. Agot Makeer delivered off the bench with 14 points and four rebounds, and Tessa Johnson tallied 10 points on 4-10 shooting.

“It means a lot,” Latson told reporters afterward. “This is why I came to South Carolina. It was a personal sacrifice that I had to make. I mean, I know a lot of people don’t get that, they don’t understand my why. I did. This is my why.”

Latson transferred from Florida State, where she had a strong career, but the Seminoles didn’t even win big in the ACC, let alone the country. She will now get to play for a national championship against UCLA on Sunday.

The Bruins (36–1) held off Texas (35–4) in the other national semifinal, 51–44. UCLA avenged its lone loss of the season to the Longhorns, and the Bruins will seek a first-ever national championship while the Gamecocks look to win it all for the first time since 2024.

South Carolina beat a Caitlin Clark-led Iowa Hawkeyes team 87–75 that year. The challenge on Sunday will be moving forward from a major upset win against a storied UConn program that has 12 national championships.

“Really, we just approached the game like any other game. We knew the stakes were high, playing in the Final Four against UConn, a very great team,” Latson said. “We approached it like any other team. We had to play South Carolina basketball, and I think we did that today.”

For UCLA, Bruins head coach Cori Close wants to see her team clean things up. The Bruins committed 23 turnovers and gave up 15 points in transition and 24 points in the paint.

“It wasn’t the sport I thought I was coaching,”  Close told ESPN’s Scott Van Pelt during SportsCenter afterward. “I think it was more rugby than it was basketball. I wanted to apologize to all the fans that we couldn’t give them a cleaner game, with 23 turnovers.”

Close knows that won’t fly on Sunday against the Gamecocks. Last year, when UCLA made the Final Four for the first time, UConn steamrolled the Bruins 85–51.

Then again, South Carolina also endured a lopsided loss to UConn in that Final Four, 82–59. Gamecocks head coach Dawn Staley hasn’t forgotten.  

“The difference is, I mean, experience,” Staley told reporters afterward. “I think losses, when you have losses that hurt, but you really understand the why, I think UConn was a really well-oiled machine. If you didn’t have disruption and consistent disruption, you allow them to play as freely as they want to play and shoot as freely as they shoot, they’re very efficient and very, very good.”

South Carolina will contend with another “well-oiled machine” in UCLA that averages 85.1 points per game, come Sunday.