Led by Paige Bueckers and Aliyah Boston, UConn-South Carolina has the makings for a dream finale

MINNEAPOLIS — A quartet of observations on Friday night’s Final Four games, and the national championship game to come Sunday between South Carolina and Connecticut (8 p.m., ESPN and ESPN+):

The Gamecocks’ 72-59 win over Louisville was rarely flashy, but it was rarely in doubt. Every time the Cardinals tried to mount a comeback, South Carolina snuffed it out.

Star forward Aliyah Boston was a big reason why. If you’re a fan of post play, you watched a clinic on Friday night. It was easy to see why Boston swept all four national player of the year awards.

Boston delivered 23 points (8-of-12 shooting), 18 rebounds, four assists, and one block. She even canned a three-pointer, and it proved to be a back-breaker with three-minutes to go.

But Boston wasn’t alone, and this is the real reason why South Carolina has been the No. 1-ranked team all season. Four other Gamecocks scored in double-figures on Friday, with Destanni Henderson doing so despite shooting 4-for-12 from the field. Zia Cooke (10 points), the team’s other star guard, shot 4-for-8. The other two double-figure scorers were the relatively-less-heralded Victaria Saxton (10 points) and Brea Beal (12 points).

» READ MORE: Aliyah Boston leads South Carolina past Louisville, 72-59, and into women’s title game

The Gamecocks will be favored Sunday, but likely not by the Target Center crowd. Expect the Huskies to have a lot more fans in the building, and they won’t all be from Connecticut. Many will hail from Minnesota, since Huskies star Paige Bueckers grew up in a Minneapolis suburb.

Will South Carolina coach Dawn Staley and UConn counterpart Geno Auriemma both play the underdog card? You don’t have to be an Eagles fan, as they are, to expect it.

For the 12th time in his career, Auriemma sat at the postgame news conference podium as the winning head coach in a national semifinal. It was a familiar feeling for the horde of media that raised hands to draw his trademark dry wit.

UConn has won the previous 11 finals it has reached. But it hasn’t had the chance to do so in six years — the longest gap between title-game appearances since the first in 1995.

This year’s run comes in a season in which the Huskies were repeatedly knocked sideways by injuries, including Bueckers’ 19-game absence from early December to late February.

» READ MORE: Dawn Staley, Geno Auriemma and Cheryl Reeve keep Philly at the forefront of women’s hoops

After UConn’s 63-58 win over Stanford, Auriemma was as forthright and funny as ever. But he was also quite reflective. Here’s what he said when asked whether this season feels different from his other triumphs:

“Yeah, 100%. You know, so many years that we’ve come here we’ve been a No. 1 seed. So many years we’ve been the number-one No. 1 [the top overall seed] — we had the best team going in, everybody knew it, and it was, ‘Let’s just go do our thing, and I don’t think anybody is going to be able to beat us if we play our A-game.’

This year, I didn’t think any of that. Coming in, I didn’t think we’re the best team there. I didn’t think we can win even if we play our A-game. We need help — we need Stanford to not play their best game, we need them to miss shots they normally make.

So, yeah, this was completely different. I’ve gone into other games at this time and lost, and felt a sense of, like — really it took me a long, long time to get over some of the losses in this particular [round of] game.

This one, I don’t think it would have taken me a long time to get over, because we just gave it everything we had. And I knew that it might not be enough. But fortunately for us, Stanford didn’t have their best stuff, and we made a couple big plays. And by some unknown miracle, we’re playing Sunday night.”

The building that hosted UConn’s famed 1995 national title win held plenty of echoes from back then for the present-day Huskies. Rebecca Lobo, that team’s biggest star, was of course the most prominent, calling Thursday’s games for ESPN. But she was far from alone.

Jamelle Elliott was courtside too, but on the other side of the floor as one of Auriemma’s assistants.

» READ MORE: Paige Bueckers and UConn top Stanford, 63-58, in a Final Four slugfest

Jennifer Rizzotti, another star of that era, was in the building in a slew of capacities: UConn alum, president of the WNBA’s Connecticut Sun, and chair of USA Basketball’s women’s national team selection committee. The U.S. squad now coached by Cheryl Reeve (and with no lack of its own Huskies legends) has been at a training camp all week across the street from the Target Center.

Also present was Carla Berube, described by Hall of Fame former Inquirer writer Mel Greenberg as “the middle inning reliever” in the 1995 title game when Lobo and Rizzotti got in foul trouble.

Berube just finished her third year as the head women’s coach at Princeton, where she oversaw one of the all-time seasons in Ivy League history: a 14-0 regular-season record, the conference tournament title, rankings in the last two AP top 25 polls, and an upset of SEC Tournament champion Kentucky in the NCAA Tournament.

You don’t have to be a college basketball old-timer to know there’s a lack of established stars in the men’s game these days — many top players turning pro after one season.

But the women’s game does have big names, and not just because there’s no one-and-done rule. Boston, is a junior. So is Stanford’s Haley Jones, who orchestrated the Cardinal’s national title run last year.

And the best-known names in the game are sophomores: Bueckers and Iowa’s Caitlin Clark.

» READ MORE: NCAA president Mark Emmert is grilled over gender inequity at the women’s Final Four

Why was Iowa-Creighton on ABC in the second round instead of No. 1 seeds Louisville and Stanford? Because of Clark’s fame. The schedule-makers were rewarded with a game for the ages: a down-to-the-wire contest in front of a jammed-to-the-rafters crowd in Iowa City. That Creighton pulled off a 64-62 upset will only put more fuel in Clark’s tank next season.

Now the women’s half of March Madness will be capped off with a Boston vs. Bueckers title game.

There’s been so much talk at the Target Center and nationwide about what can happen if women’s college basketball is marketed and televised to its full potential. It’s not just a dream now. This tournament has provided another March’s worth of evidence that the sport’s talent is real, and so is the public’s interest.