Another sloppy women's Final Four feels like a missed opportunity for the sport

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PHOENIX (AP) — The women's Final Four looked as though it might be a classic, featuring a quartet of the game's marquee programs along with a number of veteran stars and iconic coaches.

Three sloppy basketball games later, it feels like another missed opportunity. Much like last year's lopsided title game. The sport is on the rise but the last two Final Fours have featured blowouts, long-distance shooting struggles and point-blank misses.

That's not to take anything away from UCLA, which understandably thought Sunday's result was beautiful after beating South Carolina 79-51 for its first NCAA tournament title and first overall since an AIAW championship in 1978.

“I want to grow the game so bad, I felt guilty walking off the floor because it was not pretty in any way, shape or form,” UCLA coach Cori Close acknowledged Friday after her team’s 51-44 win over Texas in the semifinals wasn’t very easy on the eyes.

In that game, Texas All-America selection Madison Booker, one of game's best mid-range shooters, was 3 of 23 from the field, missing 17 straight shots at one point.

“The reality is, too, it’s really all about toughness at this point and finding a way to make a winning play,” Close added, "even if it’s a winning play you wouldn’t have predicted or chosen.”

The UCLA-Texas game wasn’t the only one that wasn’t aesthetically pleasing. South Carolina beat previously undefeated UConn 62-48 in the first semifinal game, holding the Huskies to just 31.1% shooting and a season low in points.

The lasting memory from this year's Final Four likely won't be a basketball moment. UConn coach Geno Auriemma angrily confronted South Carolina coach Dawn Staley, leading to a tense moment between two of the game's top coaches.

The clunky basketball continued into the final.

UCLA — led by Final Four MOP Lauren Betts and Gabriela Jaquez — played well. South Carolina did not. The Gamecocks shot just 29% from the field and made only 2 of 15 3-point attempts.

The lack of execution the past two years was somewhat surprising, considering the pedigree of the four programs. UConn, South Carolina, Texas and UCLA are accustomed to the bright lights and were all back in the Final Four for a second straight season.

“Sometimes in this moment things happen,” Texas coach Vic Schaefer said. “We came out of a timeout on two different occasions and people are in the wrong place. So sometimes it happens like that.”

Double-digit outcomes happen often in women's title games. Over the last 20 years, only six women's championship games have been decided by single digits — the last one was in 2021, Stanford beat Arizona 54-53.

One factor for the elite teams is that often the don't face much competition in the NCAA Tournament until the final weekend. Through the first two weeks, UConn won its tournament games by an average of 32.5 points while Texas (35.5), South Carolina (40.3) and UCLA (27) also cruised with huge margins of victory.

Once the elite teams have to face each other, the contrast in talent can be shocking.

“You could tell. Shots were short,” Staley said after the title game loss. “I thought we didn’t really do a good job at making extra passes, like the things we were doing probably worked for other teams, but other teams didn’t have a (Betts). You have to navigate differently.”

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AP March Madness bracket: https://apnews.com/hub/ncaa-womens-bracket and coverage: https://apnews.com/hub/march-madness