SAN ANTONIO – It was a long and tough battle to overcome Brittney Griner and the Lady Bears of Baylor U., but the U. Connecticut Huskies were able to pull out a win 70-50 and advance to the National Championship game. In front of a wild crowd inside the Alamo Dome in San Antonio, the Huskies jumped on the back of their two All-American’s Maya Moore and Tina Charles who rode them to victory.
The first half saw both teams trying to assert their wills and set plays upon the other. It was clear from the opening tip that UConn wanted to go right at Griner as Tiffany Hayes ran right at her for a quick lay-up. On the other end of the floor The Lady Bears wanted to get their freshmen sensation the ball and let her work in the low post. Early they struggled to get the ball inside as UConn ran a 2-3 zone and double Griner at all costs with Charles constantly battling her for position near the rim. Baylor couldn’t find the lines to pass it to her in the post and she only scored one point in the opening minutes.
Eventually the Lady Bears were able to gain entrance into the post and Griner was able to do some damage. She only sat the last 44 seconds of the game because the game was out of reach, her final stats read 13 points, five rebounds and five blocks.
“It was definitely a battle just trying to push her out of the paint, you can see that she will be a great player coming out of college,” Charles said.
“I think it’s her decision how could she wants to be, how much of an impact she wants to have on the country, I think her development can be a lot like mine was, which was a lot of mental work.”
“It was a battle in the post and Tina just did what her team needed her too,” Griner said of Charles. “She does what most posts do down low, but she is just a lot better at it than most.”
Baylor opened the second half explosively and brought was a 13 point half-time lead down to three. They were able to speed the Huskies up on offense and were able to dump the ball into the post early in the second half. A massive amount of Baylor supporters erupted and momentum clearly sided with the Lady Bears. However the UConn faithful came alive as well, after Moore drained a three point shot and then converted on a beautiful alley-oop lay-up from Kalana Greene. The lead grew to 11, then 15 and hovered near 20 points for the reminder of the second half. Baylor delivered their best shot to the champs and UConn didn’t fall, momentum was lost and so was the game for the Baylor Bears.
Head coach of the Lady bears commented after the game on how her freshmen who played couldn’t compete in the experience factor that UConn had. She thought that next year they would be in better position because they learned from the experience.
The UConn offense fell almost entirely on the shoulders of Moore and Charles who combined to score 55 points. Other than that the Husky offense never really found any rhythm. Caroline Doty didn’t score a single point as she went 0-6, Tiffany Hayes was 1-8 from the field with seven total points and Kalana Greene was only able to score seven points herself. Coach Auiremma said that they would have an extremely difficult time against Stanford if they aren’t able to find more scoring because the Stanford is too good of an offensive team.
Tip time for the National Championship will be at 7:30 p.m on Tuesday.