A UConn-South Carolina national championship rematch is exactly what the NCAA Tournament needed

TAMPA, Fla. — A year after women’s college basketball made history by pulling in a larger television audience for its national championship than the men’s title game, the question always lingered: How, possibly, could this upward momentum continue?

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There were the individual stars, who, after Caitlin Clark’s departure for the WNBA, could continue to carry the game forward — JuJu Watkins, Paige Bueckers, Flau’jae Johnson — and marquee nonconference games between the top contending teams in the country sprinkled throughout the year. But in the same way that a team cements its legacy in March and April, so too does a season make its final mark on how it will be remembered in these last days of the season.

There’s no more fitting way, no better way to continue to move women’s basketball forward than to have the two biggest programs with the two most important coaches in the game on opposite benches this Sunday, vying for the national title.

Of course, it’s not Geno Auriemma and Dawn Staley on the court, though both will have their fingerprints all over this game. Because it’s Staley and Auriemma, UConn and South Carolina, the familiarity and their competitive track record have created this rivalry and also brought new eyes to the game. There will be a small margin for error.

“It does feel like the two most prominent programs right now in women’s college basketball are playing for the right to be national champions. And we both deserve it — they deserve to be here; We deserve to be here,” Auriemma said. “Past performances, what happened last year isn’t going to be a factor on what happens Sunday. Our 11 national championships aren’t going to help us win on Sunday.”

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History might not play a part in what happens on the floor for 40 minutes on Sunday, but it certainly sets the backdrop. Auriemma’s 11 national titles set the standard for what women’s college basketball could and should be. In the last few seasons, as Staley’s program has risen to the top of the sport, her teams have advanced the game. South Carolina has made it to five consecutive Final Fours — joining the company of standard-bearers like UConn, Tennessee and Stanford. The Gamecocks are in their third national title game appearance in four years. Staley is 3-0 in national championship games; Auriemma is 11-1 (his only loss coming to the Gamecocks in 2022).

Even before then, the coaches’ paths tangled. They grew up 15 miles apart in the Philadelphia area with 16 years between their childhoods. Auriemma’s first major assistant coaching job came at the University of Virginia from 1981-85, working for Debbie Ryan. In 1985, he left to take the UConn coaching job, and in 1988, Staley became Ryan’s starting point guard on a Cavaliers team that was embarking on two decades of national relevance in women’s college hoops.

In 1991, Auriemma led the Huskies to their first Final Four, where they lost to Staley, Ryan and UVA. Later, during the 2000 Olympics — Staley’s second of three Olympic appearances — Auriemma was an assistant on Nell Fortner’s staff, working with Staley as a player. In 2012 and 2016, he left the team two golds and then handed the reins to Staley for the 2020 Olympic cycle.

During Staley’s first season at South Carolina, the Gamecocks and Huskies faced off, and for seven consecutive matchups, UConn delivered. But in 2020, at South Carolina, the tides turned. The Gamecocks, with a starting five that included four future first-round WNBA Draft picks, picked off the Huskies at home.

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“Things changed like you knew they would. They’re not going to stay like that forever,” Auriemma said. “The more things change, the more they stay the same. Now here we are.”

He means, of course, that the mantle once held as the perennial UConn opposer — previously occupied by Pat Summitt and Tennessee; Muffet McGraw and Notre Dame — was now foisted onto Staley and South Carolina.

“It’s hard to break into what Pat Summitt and Geno have done in the time that they’ve served our game. Like, it’s really hard to even be mentioned in that air,” Staley said. “We’ve been uncommonly fortunate because I do think we give hope to other programs that are up and coming to know that you can break in. You can break in.”

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Since (and including) that 2020 win at home, South Carolina has held the advantage, going 5-2 against UConn, including the 2022 national title game.

But the game that holds the most resonance for Sunday is the one that happened six weeks ago in Columbia, when the Huskies snapped South Carolina’s 71-game home winning streak by exerting an absolute dominance in Colonial Life Arena and exiting with an 87-58 win. It was the kind of UConn performance that Auriemma said the rivalry “demands and needs” to remain competitive. The loss, one in which the Gamecocks never exerted a competitive edge, was resounding, and it contributed to the Gamecocks not receiving the No. 1 overall seed in the NCAA Tournament.

By contrast, the win became the defining statement of UConn’s regular season, a benchmark of how good exactly the Huskies could be when playing against top competition.

That’s what you want in a rivalry — two teams that provide the measuring stick to one another.

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And now? In the last 40 minutes of the season, we get a rematch of the two best, two most motivated and two best-coached teams in the country. After a season in which parity was parroted as a defining theme, Sunday’s matchup features the two most obvious answers in terms of who should be here and who best serves this moment.

In a season that has maintained forward momentum without the individual star power of someone like Clark driving TV ratings, a South Carolina-UConn title game, an Auriemma-Staley chess match provides the perfect finale as it both lives up to the hype of what can be. It also sets the stage for what is to come.

This article originally appeared in The Athletic.

South Carolina Gamecocks, Connecticut Huskies, Women’s College Basketball, Women’s NCAA Tournament

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