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UConn’s Historic Final Four Streak Snapped: Buckeyes Defeat Huskies 73-61 in Heartbreaking Loss

by Ryan Lee
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Ohio State had an amazing performance and ended UConn’s impressive streak. The Huskies had a record of 14 consecutive visits to the Final Four in the Women’s NCAA Tournament, but this Saturday Ohio State beat them 73-61 in the Sweet 16 round.

Geno Auriemma from UConn said that when it comes to streaks, they will eventually end one day. According to him, it’s just a matter of time until our streak will come to an end and this will happen sooner than later.

Cotie McMahon made 23 points for the team called Buckeyes which finally ended their 30 year wait in getting to the Elite Eight. It had been since 1993 when they got to play Texas Tech and unfortunately lost that match.

When I got the chance to come to Ohio State, my goal was to do better than any team before. It was tough work but I’m very proud of our team and program for accomplishing this major achievement we have done together. Before this, we had never won a game against UConn.

I really respect Geno and his team for all they have achieved. We just won a great game that was part of the Sweet 16, which is very important and special. Geno is such a good coach that it was hard to win against him. This is an amazing victory for us!

The NCAA hockey team “Ohio State Buckeyes” were ranked 3rd (with 28 wins and 7 losses) and they played against the 2nd ranked team “UConn Huskies” (31 wins, 6 losses). Ohio State Buckeyes forced UConn to make 25 mistakes and that caused them to be eliminated from the National Championship for the first time in 14 years. It’s been since 2006, when this had happened last.

Auriemma said it’s an incredible feat to do what they achieved but they need to look ahead and keep going. Ohio State will face Virginia Tech on Monday night and the winner will get to go to Dallas. The Hokies beat Tennessee by a score of 73-64.

At the beginning of the game, Ohio State was behind by a lot of points. To get back in the game, they used a special kind of defense called full-court pressure which basically caused confusion and chaos on UConn’s offense. According to Jacy Sheldon from Ohio State, when everyone communicated and stuck together they were able to succeed in their mission. She went 10 for 10 on her foul shots, had 17 points in total, and it all started with sticking together no matter what.

This year has been really hard for the famous coach Auriemma. The bad luck didn’t stop there – even his star player, Paige Bueckers had a torn ACL and couldn’t play all season. It got so bad that UConn could not even have a game because their players were getting injured or sick one after another. This was also the first time in 30 years that UConn had 2 losses in a row.

Coach Auriemma said that they chose the wrong day to finish up all the things they had been dealing with throughout the year. Lou Lopez Senechal scored 25 points for the Huskies, Azzi Fudd got 14, and Dorka Juhasz who transferred from Ohio State managed 13 points plus 10 rebounds.

The Huskies were leading the game 17-9 before the Ohio State team started to catch up and pressure UConn with their aggressive defense. Then Ohio State scored 17 points in a row, causing UConn to make 11 mistakes one after another. UConn made 8 turnovers in the beginning of the second quarter making Coach Auriemma very frustrated.

McMahon was scoring a lot of points for Ohio State in the first half and at its end, he had scored 18 points – that’s the same amount of times UConn messed up. The Buckeyes were winning 36-26.

ESPN said that it had only happened 6 times before that UConn have trailed by double digits during an NCAA game and they had lost all those games.

In the second half, UConn did a better job with keeping control of the ball and got closer to Ohio State’s score when Senechal made a layup (a shot where the player pushes off the floor while pushing it in) getting their deficit down to 44-39. The Buckeyes did not let them get any closer during the fourth quarter. With 4:30 left on the clock, UConn was just 9 points away but McMahon stopped them by getting three points, leaving them unable to keep up from then on.

The UConn Huskies’ season will end earlier than usual this year, after they lost their game against Ohio State. This was the first time in seven attempts that UConn had been defeated by Ohio State. The Huskies failed to make many of their foul shots but Ohio State was perfect from the line. Moreover, UConn’s record for most turnovers during a single match was broken when they had 27 against Princeton. Sue’s team lost the match and their season ended at the house that she built.

The Seattle Regionals are being held in the Climate Pledge Arena, which is where the Seattle Storm play. Famous basketball star Sue Bird, who was part of both UConn and the Storm, was in attendance and got a loud cheer from the crowd when they showed her on the big screens.

Two years ago, Juhasz graduated from Ohio State University and did really well there. She received awards and was a star student. She moved to UConn last year because she wanted more of a challenge and to play with a team that had the chance of winning the national championships. Unfortunately, now she’s leaving without achieving those goals.

Juhasz still has great respect for her teachers at Ohio State University.

Follow the March Madness action on these websites: https://bigbignews.net/march-madness and https://bigbignews.net/ap-top-25-womens-college-basketball-poll and don’t forget to check out the Twitter page too, https://twitter.com/AP_Top25!

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