Purdue 23-23 Connecticut, 7:12, first half
Great feed to Clingan, but he fails to convert, and Edey rips away the rebound. Purdue is off to the races, and Smith strikes to tie the game once again.
A couple of sloppy possessions follow, but then Edey scores once again to put Purdue in front.
UConn was the clear favorite coming into this game, but I wonder if the odds have tightened yet.
Newton bravely drives at Edey and somehow gets his layup to go.
Purdue 19-21 Connecticut, 9:49, first half
Dan Hurley takes his turn being interviewed coming out of the timeout. He’s asked about guarding Edey. “What we’re doing right now is not sustainable.” King of the understatement, Mr. Hurley is.
Samson Johnson draws his second foul in quick succession, cueing Clingan’s return.
Braden Smith banks in an equalizer for Purdue.
Edey gets his third block. Alex Karaban answers with his first, and Diarra hits a 3 in transition to put UConn back in front.
Back on offense, Edey gets fouled and hits one of two.
Purdue 16-18 Connecticut, 11:28, first half
Hassan Diarra adds two for UConn with a nice drive, but then Edey puts on a show at the other end, posting up and pivoting against Clingan to get free, score and draw the foul. He hits the free throw and now has Purdue’s last 11 points.
Diarra makes another layup. Colvin tries a 3 and misses for Purdue, but Edey keeps the ball alive so that teammate Mason Gillis can snag the rebound. He’s fouled, and that takes us to the TV timeout.
Curious sequence – Edey has a massive size mismatch while Clingan sits out for a bit, but he opts instead to pass it back out.
Purdue 13-14 Connecticut, 13:05, first half
So the interior battle has materialized as expected, like Andre the Giant battling Shaquille O’Neal. But Spencer, the senior playing at his third school after Loyola (Md.) and Rutgers, is the wild card making the difference at the moment.
Braden Smith, though, shows us that Purdue’s backcourt is up for the challenge, driving and tossing the ball to the rim for Edey to slam for an emphatic equalizer despite Clingan’s effort to recover. That’s six for Edey already.
Newton hits a 3 from the corner.
Smith misses a layup, but UConn is unable to add to its lead thanks to Edey, who swats away two shots in short order as if playing volleyball. Edey then comes back and scores at the other end – that’s eight.
Purdue 9-11 Connecticut, 15:04, first half
Kaufman-Renn drives, but Clingan is waiting for him and swats it away. Spencer goes the other way for a smooth layup to put UConn ahead.
Edey posts up Clingan, and this time, he makes the trademark hook shot.
Clingan gets a measure of revenge at the other end as Spencer, the MVP of the first four minutes, fakes out the entire defense and dishes for an easy dunk.
Edey posts up again and scores.
Spencer fakes out defenders again and scores. He has seven already.
Edey posts up again and misses wildly.
UConn turnover takes us to the TV timeout.
Purdue 5-5 Connecticut, 17:45, first half
Lance Jones drives for a difficult layup, makes it and is fouled. The Purdue guard makes the free throw.
Newton works inside and draws a foul. Fletcher Loyer, on whom the foul was called, disagrees. Newton hits both free throws, and we’re tied.
Purdue 2-3 Connecticut, 18:30, first half
Edey will have a battle tonight against 7-foot-2 Donovan Clingan, and his first shot barely reaches the rim.
UConn misses a 3, and then Trey Kaufman-Renn opens the scoring for Purdue.
Cam Spencer answers with a 3.
When is tipoff? Probably not too much longer. We’ve had a lovely rendition of the national anthem, and now we’re getting player introductions.
The game is in State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Ariz., which has also hosted three Super Bowls. The court situation is interesting – players have to walk up a couple of steps from the bench to the playing surface.
About Purdue
The Boilermakers boast one of the best nicknames in college sports. What they lack is a history of Final Four appearances. They’ve been perpetually simmering in the “good but not great” category.
But coach Matt Painter has won 447 games at his alma mater. With Zach Edey owning the post, Purdue has put together three strong years – 29-8, 29-6 and 34-4.
Like UConn, Purdue has a paucity of big-name recruits but plenty of experience. Even Edey wasn’t considered a top-tier recruit upon his arrival four years ago.
And while Edey has won consecutive national player of the year honors, he’s still fighting for recognition. Most NBA mock drafts place in in the low first round or maybe the second round.
Edey averages 24.9 points and 12.2 rebounds. He has a perfect complement in sophomore guard Braden Smith, who averages 12.0 points and 7.5 assists.
About UConn
Or “Connecticut,” to give the more formal name.
When people talk about “blue bloods” in college basketball, they talk about North Carolina, Kentucky and Duke in particular. If they’re not talking about Connecticut as well, they haven’t been paying attention.
National champions in 1999. And 2004. And 2011. And 2014. And last year.
Yes, if basketball champions hosted Saturday Night Live, UConn would have a Five-Timers Club jacket.
This year, they’ve made it this far with an old-school approach. Their two leading scorers in a balanced attack, Tristen Newton and Cam Spencer, aren’t flashy one-and-dones. They’re seniors.
The Huskies didn’t load up in the transfer portal, either. Spencer transferred in from Rutgers, and they have a solid freshman in Stephon Castle, but the rest of the team’s core returns from last season.
Connecticut’s coach is Dan Hurley, who hasn’t spent much of his career in the spotlight. When he played in college at Seton Hall, he was overshadowed by his brother Bobby, who led Duke to consecutive national championships. He coached high school basketball for a decade before taking over at Wagner in 2010 and moving to Rhode Island in 2012. Bobby was actually his assistant before embarking on his own coaching career at Buffalo and Arizona State.
The Hurley patriarch, Bob Hurley, is a legendary high school coach who spent several decades at St. Anthony’s in New Jersey.
Interesting question Bryan discusses below – who is the women’s college basketball GOAT?
You could make a case for Brittney Griner, who led a Baylor team featuring just one other eventual WNBA player (Odyssey Sims) to a 40-0 record in 2011-12. In her last three seasons, Baylor’s record was 108-5.
You could go back to the 80s and consider Cheryl Miller, who won the Wooden Award three straight years. But the college game was still relatively new at that point, with a dearth of schools devoting many resources …
What? The men’s game? Oh, right …
To be honest, the whole “women better than men now” trope is uninteresting. Why judge one against the other? Nothing wrong with seeing women’s basketball getting its due, thanks to a generational talent and other compelling stories. But the men deserve some attention as well.
What a weird sentence to write.
So please enjoy the next few hours as we follow along to see if Connecticut can become the first repeat men’s champion since Florida in 2006 and 2007 or if dominant big man Zach Edey (7-foot-4, or 2.24 meters) can lead Purdue to its first national championship.
Beau will be here shortly. In the meantime, here’s Bryan Graham on the growth of the women’s game:
After the curtain finally dropped on Caitlin Clark’s collegiate career and the last of the garnet and black confetti had fallen at Cleveland’s Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse on Sunday afternoon, the all-time scoring leader in major college basketball history could finally reflect on a season that has recalibrated all expectations for how women’s sports can be covered, commercialized and consumed.
Twice in the last week alone Clark’s games have set new television ratings records for women’s college basketball with a third for the title game almost certain when Sunday’s overnights are released. Even South Carolina head coach Dawn Staley, having just completed a perfect season for a second NCAA title in three years with a team who had graduated all five starters, probably her best piece of coaching work yet, couldn’t make it far into her victory speech before paying tribute to the woman of the moment, saying: “I want to personally thank Caitlin Clark for lifting up our sport.”
Whether Clark is the greatest college player to ever lace them up is subject to debate – it’s still Maya Moore for me – but there’s no question the Hawkeyes star has done more to attract mainstream attention to the women’s game than anyone before her. Since drawing a record 55,646 fans for an October preseason game in an outdoor football stadium, Clark and the Hawkeyes became appointment viewing. Iowa’s win over LSU in the Elite Eight drew 12.3m US television viewers, making it one of the most watched sporting events of the past year outside the NFL. Their Final Four contest with Connecticut on Saturday night bested it, averaging 14.2m viewers and peaking at 17m, better than every World Series and NBA finals game last year.
You can read the full article below:
