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          Women's basketball national championship 2022: South Carolina's dominant win over UConn gets social media going

          • Tory Barron, ESPN EditorApr 4, 2022, 03:02 AM
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              Tory Barron is a Bristol-based writer and editor for ESPN.com. After retiring from playing lacrosse at UConn, the DC native decided to try her hand at writing about people playing sports.
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          For the first time since 2017, the South Carolina Gamecocks are your women's NCAA basketball tournament champions.

          Dawn Staley & Co. improved to a perfect 2-0 in national title game appearances -- and handed UConn coach Geno Auriemma his first such loss (11-1) -- with their 64-49 win over the Huskies on Sunday night.

          It was all Gamecocks from the start. South Carolina never relinquished the lead it established 22 seconds into the game. National Player of the Year Aliyah Boston wowed, as she did all season, with 11 points and 16 rebounds. Boston finished the tournament averaging 16.8 points per game and 15.2 rebounds per game -- which contributed greatly to USC's sheer dominance on the boards (49-24).

          Meanwhile, Paige Bueckers was relatively quiet by her standards, scoring 14 points and grabbing six rebounds for the Huskies.

          The Gamecocks finish with 35 wins, the most in a single season in program history. UConn finished the matchup with 49 points, its second fewest ever in an NCAA tournament game, per ESPN Stats & Information data.

          Here's what the sports world had to say about South Carolina's elite performance: