COLUMBUS, Ohio — Vic Schaefer and Muffet McGraw aren’t easily satisfied.
As difficult as it is to beat 11-time national champion Connecticut, the latest wins for the Mississippi State and Notre Dame women’s basketball teams against UConn didn’t come in the final game of the season.
A year ago, Morgan William’s buzzer-beater helped MSU make history in a 66-64 overtime victory against four-time reigning national champion UConn in the national semifinals. The victory snapped the Huskies’ NCAA-record 111-game winning streak. Unfortunately, MSU lost to South Carolina 67-55 in the national championship game.
On Friday, Notre Dame beat UConn 91-89 in overtime on Arike Ogunbowale’s buzzer-beater. Like MSU in 2017, Notre Dame will try to complete the journey with one more victory. That chance will come at 5 p.m. today (ESPN) when MSU (37-1) and Notre Dame (34-3) meet in the national title game at Nationwide Arena.
“Any time you beat Connecticut because of the dominance of their program, it is just such an emotional win that makes it really hard to kind of get back to work,” McGraw said. “You feel like that should have been the championship game. We should be going home right now, so it is a lot of emotion, a lot of adrenaline, a lot on the mental part of your game. It really is hard to come back and try to gather yourself with one day in between it is not a lot of time.”
MSU will try to do that after a 73-63 overtime victory against Louisville in the first national semifinal. Victoria Vivians had a game-high 25 points and Teaira McCowan had 21 points and a career-high 25 rebounds. The game against Notre Dame will conclude the college careers of Vivians and classmates Roshunda Johnson, Blair Schaefer, and Morgan William.
Coach Schaefer hopes the Bulldogs can put what they learned last season to work tonight to realize the goal that has been on their minds since the last loss of the 2017 season.
“People ask me all of the time, what did you learn last year and what would you do different?” Schaefer said. “There’s going to be some things we’ll do different today that we didn’t do last year to get ready. But just so excited for our kids. I’m so happy for these four seniors. They’re getting to play it out again in their career.”
Follow Dispatch sports editor Adam Minichino on Twitter @ctsportseditor
Adam Minichino is the former Sports Editor for The Commercial Dispatch.
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