MINNEAPOLIS — While dominant inside player Aliyah Boston was getting most of the headlines for South Carolina entering the championship game of the Women’s Final Four, the smallest player on the court stole the show.
The Gamecocks’ 5-foot-7 guard Destanni Henderson scored 26 points to lead the school to its second national title in a 64-49 win over Connecticut on Monday night before 18,304 at the Target Center.
It marked the first time that the Huskies, who have won a record 11 NCAA titles, have lost in a championship game.
The ultra-quick Henderson scored 10 points in the fourth period as the Gamecocks pulled away from a 46-39 lead to start the period.
The game pitted the past two Player of the Year winners in the 6-5 Boston, who won the award this season and had 23 points and 18 rebounds in South Carolina’s 73-59 win over Louisville in the semifinals, and Connecticut guard Paige Bueckers, a former Hopkins High School star who won the award last season but missed 19 games this season due to a knee injury.
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Boston had 11 points and a game-high 16 rebounds. Bueckers, who didn’t score in the first period, finished with 14 points on 6-of-13 shooting.
The top-ranked Gamecocks (35-2), with head coach Dawn Staley at the helm, won their previous national title in 2017. They were ranked No. 1 entering last year’s Final Four but were upset 66-65 by Stanford in a semifinal and had vowed to make up for that in the Twin Cities.
The Gamecocks became just the eighth school to win multiple titles since the NCAA began conducting women’s basketball tournaments in 1981-82. The Huskies and the Tennessee Volunteers, who has eight titles, have combined to win nearly half of them.
The bigger Gamecocks crushed the fifth-ranked Huskies (30-6) on the boards, 49-24. At one point in the first half, the margin was 17-3.
The Gamecocks dominated the first period, taking a 22-8 lead. And it soon would get more lopsided. They led early in second period by as much as 30-12.
But back came the Huskies. They closed the period with a 15-5 spurt to cut the deficit to 35-27 at halftime.
It helped Connecticut’s cause that Bueckers scored nine points in the second period after being shut out in the first period. Bueckers, guarded closely by Henderson, didn’t take a shot until 3:20 remained in the first period. And she didn’t score her first points until 8:35 was left in the first half.
In the first half, Boston managed just five points on 2-of-6 shooting. The Gamecocks looked other places for their scoring, with Henderson scoring 11 points in the half while shooting 3-of-3 from three-point range, and guard Zia Cooke having eight points of her 11 points. Cooke made her first three shots of the game but finished the first half 4-of-9.
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In the third period, the Gameocks moved out to 43-27 lead, but back again came the Huskies. They went on a 10-0 run and cut the deficit to three-pointers by Caroline Ducharme with 2:03 left in the period and by Evina Westbrook with 1:33 left in the period.
But Henderson stepped up again. She was 1-of-2 from the foul line and then drove in for a layup to give the Gamecocks a 46-37 lead at the end of the period.
Then she really took over. While she was scoring her 10 point, most of South Carolina’s many fans on hand stood for much of the fourth period.
