The Winner Takes Them All: U-Conn.'s Perfect

Huskies Cruise, Control Louisville for Sixth NCAA Title: Connecticut 76 Louisville 54

ST. LOUIS, April 7 -- Connecticut's 76-54 victory over Louisville in the women's NCAA basketball final Tuesday night was only a few minutes old when its players gathered at one end of the Scottrade Center court and danced. Commemorative T-shirts covered their jerseys and blue caps sat askew on their heads as they boogied alongside their cheerleaders and their big white mascot.

The Huskies had displayed such purpose and ruthless efficiency en route to winning their first 38 games of the season, but that melted away once they wrapped up the program's third undefeated season (joining the 1995 and 2002 squads) and sixth national title (first since 2004).

Junior center Tina Charles, the Final Four's most outstanding player after posting 25 points and 19 rebounds, gleefully told the announced crowd of 18,478, "I just want to say one thing: President Barack Obama, I'll be seeing you soon!" Coach Geno Auriemma, who is now 6-0 in national finals, stood atop a ladder to cut off the net, then slipped his body through the hoop and waved to the Connecticut fans. When he returned to the floor, his players picked him up, tried to mash a hat on his well-coiffed hair, and then carried him off the court.

"We can finally breathe," said senior point guard Renee Montgomery, who had 18 points and four assists. "Everything we won -- the Cancun tournament, the regular season, Big East -- we couldn't be too excited because we had another game to follow up. . . . So I think this is the first time we actually can just stop and really enjoy the win for more than a couple of days."

The 22-point victory was a fitting end to what was a thoroughly dominating season by the Huskies. They won their games by an average of 30.5 points and became the first team in NCAA history, men's or women's, to go undefeated and win every game by a double-digit margin. The largest deficit they faced this season was eight points -- they went on to win that game, against California in the round of 16, by 24 -- and only one team, Notre Dame, held a second-half lead against them.

The Cardinals (34-5) lost to Connecticut twice during the regular season by a combined score of 168-101, but they vowed that this game would be different. Louisville, a third seed, knocked off three of the top five teams in the country in succession -- No. 5 Baylor, No. 3 Maryland and No. 4 Oklahoma -- just to get to Tuesday's game.

"There is no question U-Conn. is the best team in the country. There's no doubt," Louisville Coach Jeff Walz said Monday. "But what we have to do is find a way to play better for 40 minutes. That's it."

To that end, Walz, a former Maryland assistant, told his players to think of the final as a series of mini-games, each comprising the four minutes between media timeouts; the goal, freshman Becky Burke said, was to win as many as possible and to not get blown out in any.

The Cardinals started off strong, taking a 9-8 lead into the first timeout. Senior Angel McCoughtry (23 points) scored the first basket of the game, a three-pointer from the left corner that gave Louisville its largest lead against Connecticut this season. The score was tied at 15 at the second timeout; McCoughtry had 11 of Louisville's points.

Then the Huskies started to take control. Sophomore Maya Moore, the consensus national player of the year, deflected a pass to freshman Tiffany Hayes, and she set up Moore for a fast-break layup. Burke responded with a shot along the baseline to even it at 17 with 10 minutes 39 seconds left in the first half, but the Cardinals came up empty on three straight possessions, missing two layups and throwing away a pass.

"We know that when another team scores, we want to drive it right back at them," said Moore, who finished with 18 points, 9 rebounds, 5 assists and 3 steals. "And usually when that happens, Renee will push it in transition and find Tina and we will get one in and we'll just keep thriving on that momentum."

Louisville, which doesn't have a true point guard or a player taller than 6 feet 2, struggled to contain Montgomery and the 6-4 Charles, a pair of all-Americans. At halftime, Montgomery and Charles had outscored Louisville, 26-25; the Huskies had 39 points overall.

"The worst part about doing something like this is you have to be asked what it feels like," Auriemma said. "Now I'm not saying it's because we don't want to say what it feels like; it's just you can't put into words what it feels like. This is the first time since the brackets came out that I don't feel like I'm going to get sick, physically sick, thinking about everything that was ahead of us."