SPOKANE, Wash. — For the fourth time in five years, the UConn women’s basketball team advanced to the 2025 Final Four with a 78-64 victory over No. 1 seed USC in the Spokane 4 regional final Monday night.
The No. 2 seed Huskies are the only team lower than a 1-seed to reach this year’s Final Four across both the men’s and women’s NCAA Tournaments, and they will play Spokane 1 champion UCLA — the top overall seed — in the national semifinal Friday in Tampa, Florida. UConn is making its 16th Final Four appearance in the last 17 seasons and its 24th all-time.
Freshman Sarah Strong played like a seasoned veteran in her first Elite Eight game, powering UConn with 22 points and a career-high 17 rebounds plus four assists and a steal. The stat line marked Strong’s third double-double of the NCAA Tournament and her 12th of the season. She was also the Huskies’ most efficient shooter hitting 61.5% from the field and 4-for-6 from 3-point range, her best performance from beyond the arc since Dec. 3 against Holy Cross.
Superstar Paige Bueckers led the Huskies with her third straight 30-point game, scoring 31 shooting 9-for-18 from the field plus 4-for-8 on 3-pointers. The redshirt senior added six assists, three rebounds and a block, and she grabbed a team-high four steals. Bueckers and Strong both played all 40 minutes in the win, Strong for the first time in her rookie campaign.
“These games are really, really, really hard. There was just so much going on in the game that both teams, I think, had to struggle through,” coach Geno Auriemma said. “There’s a way that you win these games and, generally speaking, they’re on the backs of one or two particular players that are going to put the team on their backs and get us to the next level, to get us to the Final Four. Obviously Sarah and Paige both did that tonight in their own way, and you couldn’t ask any more of them. They both played 40 minutes and they both played their hearts out.”
Behind the stars, senior point guard Kaitlyn Chen had her best performance of the tournament with 13 points, nine of which came before halftime. She was a rock for the Huskies defensively helping limit the Trojans to just 32.8% shooting from the field, and UConn finished with 20 points off of 15 USC turnovers.
The Huskies found themselves in an early hole after giving up a 10-0 run to USC before the first media timeout, but they responded late in the first with a 9-0 run powered by Strong on both ends of the floor. The freshman hit two 3-pointers, including the one that ended USC’s run, for six of UConn’s first eight points, and she had 10 by the end of the quarter plus four defensive rebounds.
“(Assistant coach Jamelle Elliott) and I sat down at one point yesterday, and we said that’s it,” Auriemma said. “We’re going to force her to shoot the ball and force her to score. We’re not going to leave it up to her anymore … I knew it was going to be hard as hell for Paige to get going in the first quarter because I know what teams do to her. It takes a while for it to shake itself out … so Sarah just completely carried us that whole first quarter.”
Bueckers didn’t make her first field goal until the final minute of the first, but she made her presence felt with a pair of steals that resulted in offensive opportunities for the Huskies. UConn scored nearly half of its first-quarter points off of turnovers, and it forced four against the Trojans over the final five minutes of the first quarter to reclaim a 14-11 lead.
Strong continued to dominate the start of the second quarter and ended the half with a team-high 15 points. Bueckers got hot late in the quarter hitting back-to-back 3-pointers in the last 40 seconds before halftime to open up a 14-point lead for the Huskies. UConn’s 5-for-10 start from 3-point range was a major separator as USC went 0-for-5 in the first half, and Bueckers and Strong outscored the Trojans by themselves 28-25.
There was no cooling off for Strong in the second half as she opened the third quarter by sinking her fourth 3-pointer, then almost immediately secured her tenth rebound on the defensive end. Bueckers began to take over after hitting her third three of the game and she reached the 20-point threshold for the third straight game in the tournament on a signature mid-range jump shot.
“I think just playing a lot of basketball, getting a lot of reps at it, having a great team that has so much confidence in you, a coaching staff that has so much confidence in you just builds you up so you feel confident in these moments,” Bueckers said. “So just trying to read what the game is calling for, read what we need at that moment, at that time, whether it’s passing, rebounding, scoring, just trying to do whatever it takes to win.”
But though Bueckers and Strong had 40 of UConn’s 51 points at the end of the third, the Huskies’ lead crumbled from as many as 19 points to just five after the Trojans finished the quarter on an 11-0 run. USC guard Talia von Oelhoffen scored 10 points in the third alone, and UConn missed seven straight field goals to end the quarter.
Auriemma knew the Huskies needed a boost heading into the fourth, and despite her 0-for-9 start from the field, he drew up the first play of the final quarter for star guard Azzi Fudd. She nailed her first 3-pointer of the game, and UConn never looked back after that. The backcourt duo of Bueckers and Fudd rallied the Huskies back to a comfortable lead combining for 13 straight points and going 3-for-4 beyond the arc during the run. Fudd logged all eight of her points in the final quarter, and she combined with Bueckers to score 19 of the Huskies’ 27.
“As I’m drawing it up I thought, I should go with Paige. But then I thought, well, we can’t win this just by going to her all night. At some point, somebody else is going to make a shot, so maybe this will be it,” Auriemma said. “So, (it was a) hunch. Drew up something we hadn’t run the whole game, and she knocked it in … How do you know it was a great decision? Because it worked.”
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