NCAA Basketball National Championship || What Happened? PLUS Roundup
Edition #73
INTRO:
Monday’s final may have been exciting, but there was nothing like Sunday’s final. Nothing at all.
Men’s Final: 14.8 million viewers
Women’s Final: 18.9 million viewers
Caitlin Clark. Kamilla Cardoso.
Cam Spencer. Zach Edey.
We’re going to go over what happened and then get to the Wednesday Roundup piece. Should be a short one today.
NCAA BASKETBALL NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP
Let’s save the best for last.
Men’s
UConn vs Purdue.
UConn was looking to repeat as champions. If they did, they would’ve been the 6th team to do so. They were going up against the Purdue Boilermakers (sounds fun to say).
You might have thought this was a huge offensive game, especially looking at what the score was. But, the truth is…
The Huskies did an impressive job of defending against the second-best 3-point shooting team in the country by limiting them to only seven shots from behind the arc, resulting in just one make. That’s the main reason why they let Zach Edey go for 37 points. Check this. He had 37 points while the rest of his team had 23!
Offensive side of the ball for UConn was mainly Tristen Newton. He scored 20 points for the Huskies.
Here’s a fun fact. That was the 12th straight game UConn won and they’ve won by 13 points and above EVERY SINGLE TIME!
“I just think it’s the best two-year run in a very, very long time, just because of everything we lost from last year’s team,” said Dan Hurley, the UConn head coach whose top two scorers from last year now play in the NBA. “To lose that much and do it again, it’s got to be as impressive a two-year run since at least prior to Duke.”
“They just made a decision — we can defend the perimeter, and we can take this away from you, you’re going to get the ball to your best player, he’ll be 1-on-1, and that’s that,” Purdue coach Matt Painter said.
That
was
defense.
“Coaches made a point that we’d be really locked in if we controlled their 3-point attempts,” Spencer (UConn player) said. “Holding them to seven shows we were locked in on making sure their guards didn’t get involved in the game.”
The final score was 75-60.
It was a good game, but this one could definitely not beat the women’s. Nah. That was too good.
Women’s
"Whether it's the way the fans have supported me, the way I've been able to represent my state where I grew up, my family being at every single game -- there's not a regret in my mind of how things went," Clark said. "I'll be able to sleep every night even though I never won a national championship.
"I don't sit and sulk about the things that never happened. My mom always taught me, 'Keep your head high, be proud of everything that you've accomplished.' And, you know, I think I'm so hungry for a lot more, too."
Yeah. The Iowa Hawkeyes lost. The South Carolina Gamecocks won, and even after ALL the accomplishments and the history she made in the college level, she didn’t win a national championship. That’s… Sad…
Steve Nash. Such an amazing player. No titles… I’m getting the same vibes here.
It was certainly a good to watch, way better than the men’s game, but South Carolina just took it away. To go a bit more deeper into this, Tessa Johnson took this game away from the Hawkeyes who had a 11-point lead early in the game.
Iowa probably wouldn’t have had that 11-point lead if not for Iowa's centers Hannah Stuelke and Addison O'Grady who made sure that Cardoso, one of the Gamecocks star players, went 2 for 6 shooting in the first quarter. Here was the tiny problem. Jackson. She led the Gamecocks' 36-0 bench scoring advantage! She also got a pair of steals, turning each into transition baskets!
Johnson was the top scorer with 19 points and made three triples, which helped South Carolina take a small lead at halftime. After that, it was a momentum game. South Carolina dominated the third quarter. That was the reason the Gamecocks won their second national title in three years, capping off an undefeated season.
Also, seven Gamecocks made at least three field goals. That’s rough.
Final Score: 87-75
Clark Watch?
Clark is going to be the #1 pick in the WNBA Draft this year. It was decided. It is decided. This is as easy of a decision as picking Wemby first in the NBA Draft. Who holds that pick? The Indiana Fever. Just an hour and 17 minutes off from Iowa.
She has SO MANY RECORDS.
She has set a new record in Division I by finishing with more points than any men's or women's player ever.
She is the only female player in Division I to have scored more than 3,000 points and provided over 1,000 assists in her career, with a total of 1,144 assists.
Additionally, she has 990 rebounds to her name.
Her career average of 28.42 points per game and 548 3-pointers are both Division I records.
This year, she has broken the record for single-season 3-pointers with 201 and the record for single-season points with 1,234.
"She moved needles, she did things that no one was doing other than Steph Curry, shooting from where she shot, but never losing her sense of fun and flair," said longtime Iowa assistant coach Jan Jensen. I wish we could have helped her get us to the title ... But most people can respect her greatness. Maybe they won't call her 'GOAT' ... But she'll always be our GOAT.”
"Those things are so hard to accomplish," Clark said. "That was never something I was chasing in my career [or] anything I ever set out to do. I have to give Coach Bluder a lot of credit because she's allowed me to be myself. Whether it's the shots I take, the fire I play with ... She's allowed me to be me, and I don't know if there's many coaches across the country that I could have committed to that would have allowed me to do that. I wouldn't have had this type of career."
Iowa. It’s not a prestigious college to play college basketball. In fact, before this Clark stuff, the last time they made it to the Final Four was 1993. Clark talked about that too.
"When I reflect back on my [Iowa] career, I know I gave it every single thing I had," Clark said. "Basically, everybody believed there's no way Iowa was making the Final Four once. But to do it twice? That's pretty incredible."
ROUNDUP:
Speaking of woman’s basketball, grace wrote an article about it. It was truly A.M.A.Z.I.N.G. as usual. Check it out:
Lenny Rachitsky is WAY TOO GOOD. I don’t know from what perspective and how he’s bringing all the new, but it’s seriously rad. Check out another one about Duolingo and about AI and how it’ll affect PM’s.
YES! ANOTHER GO LONG SERIES!!! This time it’s called Smash the Window and Tyler Dunne has once again done an AMAZING job.
Check out Part 1 and 2 here
Back to College Basketball and let’s talk a bit more about the men’s championship. Neil Paine tells us UConn. How did they do it… again?
For our last roundup feature, Alex Varghese brings in a perspective I couldn’t even dream thinking about out. Check out
Conclusion
And, that’s it for today y’all. Hopefully, you enjoyed this short edition. Will be back at you on Saturday for a good long post. Check my notes for the topic.
I was at the women’s championship game!!
Thank you for the love!! 🙌❤️