CNN
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The sequel didn’t have the very same solid as the unique. Faculty basketball doesn’t work that means.
However the two distinguished stars from the NCAA ladies’s basketball match a yr in the past – Iowa’s Caitlin Clark and LSU’s Angel Reese – remained entrance and heart within the sport. Monday evening, they each lived as much as the hype, nevertheless it’s the sharp-shooting Clark who will get to play on.
Clark had 41 factors – together with going 9-of-20 from three-point vary – to go along with 12 assists and 7 rebounds, and No. 1 Iowa topped No. 3 LSU 94-87, a rematch of final yr’s NCAA title sport, to advance to the Remaining 4 for the second consecutive season.
“Job’s not completed,” Clark stated on the courtroom to ESPN after the win.
Up subsequent for Iowa is a program synonymous with the Remaining 4 and successful nationwide championships: No. 3 UConn, who held off freshman phenom JuJu Watkins and No. 1 USC 80-73 within the regional last in Portland, Oregon.
Will probably be the twenty third Remaining 4 look – and fifteenth within the final 16 NCAA tournaments – for the 11-time nationwide champion Huskies, all underneath head coach Geno Auriemma. Will probably be the third Remaining 4 for UConn star Paige Bueckers, who missed final season with a torn ACL.
This is perhaps impossible Remaining 4 journey of all of them, as UConn, decimated by accidents this season, had a depleted roster.
In the meantime, on the other aspect of the ladies’s bracket, undefeated and high total seed South Carolina will face No. 3 NC State within the Remaining 4. These two groups clinched their spots with wins on Sunday.
The ladies’s Remaining 4 is about to occur Friday at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse in Cleveland, Ohio, and the nationwide championship sport is scheduled on Sunday.
Clark, who has essentially the most profession factors in Division I historical past for men and women, is a generational expertise. The 22-year-old is projected to be the No. 1 total choose within the WNBA draft on April 15.
However earlier than the WNBA, she has one final shot for a nationwide title.
After the sport, the Iowa famous person shared a second within the handshake line with Reese and LSU head coach Kim Mulkey.
“(Clark) simply instructed me, ‘Proceed to be an excellent participant,’ and I instructed her proceed to be an excellent participant, as effectively, and hold elevating the sport and go win it,” Reese stated.
“What did I say to her? I stated, ‘I certain am glad you’re leaving,’” Mulkey stated. “I stated, ‘Woman, you one thing else.’ By no means seen something prefer it.”
Was revenge on Iowa’s thoughts after what occurred final yr?
“To be sincere, no,” Clark stated.
Whereas Iowa and LSU had been going through one another within the Elite Eight, the competition at MVP Enviornment in Albany, New York, had the vitality and depth of a nationwide championship sport.
Regardless of rolling her ankle within the second quarter, Reese had her tenth consecutive double-double within the NCAA match, tying the match file, with 17 factors and 20 rebounds earlier than fouling out with 1:45 left. She additionally had 4 assists, three blocks and two steals.
Kate Martin added 21 factors for Iowa, whereas Sydney Affolter had 16. LSU’s Flau’jae Johnson had 23 factors.
The final time Clark and Reese squared off – with Reese famously waving her hand in entrance of her face towards Clark after which pointing to her ring finger as LSU closed in on the nationwide title – it was the most-watched ladies’s school basketball sport in historical past. The matchup in 2023 was in comparison with when Magic Johnson confronted Larry Chicken within the 1979 NCAA males’s title sport.
However Johnson and Chicken didn’t have a Half II (at the very least not in school) like Clark and Reese did.
Clark retains including to the file books, breaking the NCAA’s all-time file for three-pointers made in a profession throughout Monday’s sport, surpassing Taylor Robertson of Oklahoma.
Clark additionally broke the NCAA match file for many assists (140) and three-pointers (70) in 15 profession video games.
It’s not identified if Reese, final yr’s Remaining 4 Most Excellent Participant, will return to LSU or head to the WNBA. Reese, who can be 22 in Could, is a junior.
“I’ll decide once I’m prepared,” Reese instructed reporters after the sport.
Whereas a rematch between Iowa and LSU was the massive talker heading into the NCAA match, the later of Monday evening’s Elite Eight matchups was compelling, too.
USC’s Watkins, simply 18 years outdated, is second within the nation to Clark in factors per sport this season. On Monday in Portland, whereas on her technique to 29 factors and 10 rebounds, she set the file for many factors scored by a freshman in a single season.
However the Huskies prevailed, as Bueckers, who just lately was hailed by Auriemma the “finest participant in America,” led her group with 28 factors, 10 rebounds and 6 assists.
Bueckers, a 22-year-old redshirt junior, introduced in February she would return to UConn for yet another season as a substitute of choosing the WNBA.
In 2021, she grew to become the primary freshman to win the Naismith, Related Press and Wood participant of the yr awards.
“Simply a lot pleasure and delight for this group,” Bueckers stated. “I’m so proud. We’re not even presupposed to be right here, and right here we’re.”
Notably, USC and UConn had been taking part in on the Moda Middle in Portland – the location the place it was found Sunday that the three-point traces on the courtroom had been uneven and never the identical distance from the basket.
In a press release earlier Monday, NCAA vp for ladies’s basketball Lynn Holzman stated the problem was corrected, and the courtroom is now in “full compliance with NCAA taking part in guidelines.” She added what occurred in Portland “was an remoted incident.”
“We apologize for this error and the size of time for which it went unnoticed,” Holzman stated. “Merely put, this courtroom didn’t meet our expectations, and the NCAA ought to have caught the error sooner.”
To channel the film “That is Spinal Faucet,” the amplification on this evening of the NCAA match went to 11.
“RIP to the viewership numbers, proper? It’s going to crush all the pieces,” USC head coach Lindsay Gottlieb stated Sunday.
“I feel we’d all inform you, proper, it’s USC towards UConn, and it’s LSU towards Iowa. However star energy drives narratives in athletics. It’s why the NBA took off, you already know, when there have been faces to it, going all the way in which again to Magic and Larry and Michael Jordan.”
“The NCAA obtained it proper, as a result of tonight’s ladies’s match matchups are probably the greatest in historical past!” Magic Johnson stated in a publish on X.
“There may be star energy on all 4 groups, nice teaching, and all have excellent storylines on how they made it to the Elite Eight! As a basketball fan and a fan of ladies’s sports activities, that is heaven for me!”