Of the teams competing in the NCAA women’s basketball Final Four, just one of them — Arizona — was on this stage for the first time.
The Wildcats were ready for the moment. Arizona, a No.3 seed in this year’s tournament, stunned No.1 seed Connecticut 69-59 on Friday night at the Alamodome in San Antonio, Texas, to advance to the national championship game. Arizona never trailed in the game. „No one thought we’d win. No one thought we’d be here. We don’t care,“ Arizona head coach Adia Barnes said after the game on the ESPN broadcast. Said Arizona senior guard Aari McDonald, who led all scorers with 26 points: „We just believed. We worked hard to get here.“ The Wildcats will face a familiar foe in Sunday’s final in fellow Pac-12 team and No.1 overall seed Stanford, who held off No.1 seed South Carolina 66-65 earlier in the day. The Cardinal is back in the national championship game for the first time since 2010. While the Wildcats are aiming for their first national title, Stanford seeks its third, having won it all in 1990 and 1992. Both of those titles came under Tara VanDerveer, the winningest head coach in women’s basketball history. After Stanford’s win, and before Arizona and UConn took the floor, VanDerveer said she was pulling for the Wildcats. „That would be awesome,“ she said. „We’re rooting for Arizona. It would be really exciting to — it’s just I think a credit to how competitive the Pac-12 is.
