Caitlin Clark steals the show and Iowa stuns South Carolina 77-73 in women's Final Four

 

Boston and Clark have been the best players in college basketball the last two seasons -- Boston swept the player of the year honors last year, Clark did it this year -- and fans have been clamoring for a matchup between the two. It never developed in this game, with Boston getting in foul trouble early.

Boston picked up her second with 1:38 left in the first quarter and didn't play the rest of the half, and didn't get her first points until there was 7:09 left in the third. She finished with eight points and 10 rebounds in just 25 minutes. 

"Our shots just didn’t really fall," Boston said.

But the game didn't suffer from her absence. Clark and the Hawkeyes made sure of that. 

"Tonight showed how fun women’s basketball is," Clark said, adding that she thinks most people wished it would have been a seven-game series. 

Iowa has neither the size nor the depth of South Carolina, and one of the biggest questions coming into the game was how the Hawkeyes would handle the Gamecocks inside.

 Just fine, thank you.

"We're clearly not as tall as them, we're clearly not as athletic as them," Clark said. "But we’re a very, very skilled basketball team."

Iowa served notice early on that it wasn’t afraid, packing the paint, banging inside with South Carolina and putting the Gamecocks on their heels. Time and again, Clark zipped the ball to Czinano down low, who barreled her way to the basket while South Carolina's imposing defenders just stood and watched. She had 18, and Iowa's 38 points in the paint were just eight fewer than South Carolina, a stat nobody would have predicted before the game.

When Clark wasn't setting up Czinano, she was making baskets like she was playing Pop-a-Shot. There were 3s taken from DFW. Sneaky little layups. And in the filthiest of them all, she broke the ankles of 6-foot-7 Kamilla Cardoso on a shake-and-bake in the third quarter. 

https://beautyhealthcareproduct123.blogspot.com/
https://beautyhealthcareproduct123.blogspot.com/
https://beautyhealthcareproduct123.blogspot.com/
https://beautyhealthcareproduct123.blogspot.com/
https://beautyhealthcareproduct123.blogspot.com/

The only reason the game was even remotely close was because of Zia Cooke and South Carolina's bench.

Cooke played the entire game, finishing with a team-high 24 points. The Gamecocks are so deep their backups are better than many teams' starting fives, and they scored more than half -- 38 -- of South Carolina's points. 

But Iowa has been hearing all week -- and, let's be honest, all year -- about how dominant South Carolina is. How imposing and impenetrable they are. How unbeatable the overall No. 1 seed was. 

It had to grate on the Hawkeyes, especially knowing this game was the most highly anticipated of the Final Four. Either one of them. 

"We've gotten this far by just being ourselves, stepping into our roles, and just doing what we know how to do. We don't have to change this for this game," Czinano said Thursday.

"We have the No. 1 offense, so just kind of ride with that and keep that going. We've gotten where we are by being who we are, so we just need to keep doing that."

It was plenty. And it was plenty entertaining, a game that more than lived up to the hype.

 

https://beautyhealthcareproduct123.blogspot.com/
https://beautyhealthcareproduct123.blogspot.com/
https://beautyhealthcareproduct123.blogspot.com/
https://beautyhealthcareproduct123.blogspot.com/
https://beautyhealthcareproduct123.blogspot.com/