Texas coach Karen Aston gives her thoughts on Final Four

They don’t own any of those 11 national championships.

Although Starkville’s gratitude to the team’s success comes along with the vision Head Coach Vic Schaefer had when he joined the program, the time to celebrate is over and the next challenge awaits Mississippi State.

That loss is typically something that anyone would like to forget and move on from.

The week after the game, Schaefer was scheduled to speak in front of the Women’s Basketball Coaches Association.

“It was really disappointing and embarrassing”, Dom Dillingham said. That game against Notre Dame is back behind us now.

“I think we’ll win, but it won’t be an easy game”. But for these kids, they showed a maturity that I didn’t know if they had or not. We told her, ‘they are not adjusting and not guarding it so we are going to keep running it.’ I just feel like she was truly a great point guard that day, she was not going to let her team lose and she had that mindset. Great offensive chemistry. Great skill sets. “The teams that are in the top 10 in the country have realized that they have to get a lot better if they want to beat us, and that’s a good thing because we don’t expect to be where we are today every single day, every year, year after year”. “If they think they had anything to do with that win, they’re going to be reminded, no, they didn’t. This is where they belong”.

“There’s this, ‘Hey, don’t worry about it; everything will be fine, ‘” Auriemma said.

“The number one thing you notice about them is they are a really big team”, she said. “I think for us, it is going to be (trying) to limit her touches, limit how much play making she can do and defensively be on the same page”. They just have this attitude like everything will be fine, don’t worry about it. “They’re always winning and people get upset because they can’t take them down”. “It was fantastic to see the support in the community at Mississippi State but you have to put out all the excitement and get back the game plan”. It kind of just has to happen. If those three seniors were here, I would have a tough time convincing them.

After scoring a career-high 41 points in a victory that spoiled Baylor’s chance to play in the Final Four just 100 miles from its Waco campus, William crumbled in tears during a national TV interview. The Huskies have five spots on the floor where they can score, and their top four players Katie Lou Samuelson, Napheesa Collier, Kia Nurse and Gabby Williams all dramatically improved their respective games since previous year.

It may be a tall task, but William and the Bulldogs have already defied the odds once en route to clinching a spot in the Final Four. They are playing with a chip on their shoulder now. “It just seems like it gets harder and harder to believe because it is getting harder and harder to accomplish this”, Auriemma said.

The semifinals and title game are reportedly near sellouts, but Auriemma isn’t sure whether a seventh national title in nine years by his program would be celebrated much outside of Storrs, Conn. “I mean, it’s not going to be a 50-48 game”.

FAMILY TIES: Schaefer and his daughter, Blair, are the first father-daughter to compete in the Final Four.

Despite a historic defending champion aiming for more records in one game, the other Final Four matchup shouldn’t be considered “other” by any stretch of the imagination.

The one way teams have been able to stay with the Huskies this year is when UConn has gotten in foul trouble. From my experience, California basketball players, they’re like Italian vehicle drivers in Italy: red lights, stop signs, whatever, they’re just a suggestion. That’s it in a nutshell. But they remember specific plays from the handful of games the Huskies have lost over those years, and they don’t take anything for granted – especially not tonight.