Extraordinary.
As the Four Seasons’ song goes, “Oh, what a night.” We dislike the overuse of superlatives and yet we’re coronating Good Friday as the greatest night in women’s basketball history.
Remember last week when Twitter was abuzz with debate about UConn being bad for the women’s game? We think that’s rubbish and we’d say that even if the Huskies hadn’t come up short in the national semifinals in consecutive years.
But this post isn’t about a streak ending. Four teams played on Friday night in Columbus, Ohio, and women’s basketball won. It was a night when a casual fan can turn into a diehard. And here’s why that’s special. Women’s basketball has fans of teams, but hopefully some folks turned off the TV as fans of the sport. If you didn’t have a dog in the fight on Friday at 7 p.m., you probably had one by the time the clock struck midnight or maybe you were like us.
You had four. That’s how good these games were.
We pulled for Louisville early — Jeff Walz is a hoot and how painful was it to watch Sam Fuerhing walk to the bench after the T? But what’s not to admire about Mississippi State’s grit behind monster center Teaira McCowan, who played every minute of the 45-minute contest, and Victoria Vivians, the best offensive player on the floor despite playing extended minutes with four fouls?
Could you top the drama that sent the game into OT when the Cardinals lost a three-point lead with five seconds remaining after Roshunda Johnson drained an improbable 3 and Louisville missed twice at the other end?
Well, since you ask . . .
UConn, trailing by five with 15 seconds left, looked done only a 3 by Napheesa Collier and a steal and score by Kia Nurse, and hello, OT. We figured Notre Dame to be crushed — Muffet McGraw has lamented her defense, UConn surely would prevail only . . . what a riveting five minutes. The capper: Arike Ogunbowale coming up with her best impersonation of what Morgan William did a year ago.
“They made one more great play than we did,” said Geno — a fitting summation of an epic semifinal.
We went to bed celebrating with Arike but struck by what seniors Gabby William, Nurse and Myisha Hines-Allen must have felt like walking off the court at Nationwide Arena.
Mississippi State and Notre Dame move on to Sunday’s national championship — and who would bet against the Irish on Easter? — but in our book, this was a win-win for women’s basketball and a just plain win for basketball. Put Arike’s gamewinner up against any big time play — NBA included. Dramatic turns, minimal whistles, tense moments, unbelievable playmaking all packed into five hours when the stakes were huge.
Oh, what a night. Late March in 2018. We won’t forget it anytime soon.
UConn is not the nearly the same team Miss. State beat last year and they won”t lose to them again. Just the year previously UConn embarrassed Miss. State in the Big 8. I truly feel sorry for the next 2 teams that UConn faces. They will likely meet the same UConn team that beat us, and that has been on a mission since their last loss. Oh, and many are saying that next years Huskies team is going to be better, if one can believe that. That said, both times we played UConn this season, we stunk! Even last year, when UConn was down, for them anyhow, we lost by double digits. For some reason Dawn hasn”t figured out how to improve her approach to planning/scheming against them. This should not be the case, considering the fact that we play them every year. One more thing, if we and other women”s teams in college basketball refuse to recruit and develop better perimeter shooters, UConn is going to remain undefeated for the foreseeable future. The gap between them and EVERYONE else is as wide as the Grand Canyon! cialis online