UK Hoops loses to UConn in Elite 8 again

For the second year in a row and the third time in the last four years, the UK women’s basketball team fell in the NCAA Tournament one game shy of the program’s first ever Final Four bid. The Cats lost in the Bridgeport Regional final to the top-seeded UConn Huskies by a final score of 83-53, ending the program’s first 30-win season ever.
UK led the Huskies 23-22 with nine minutes left in the first half, and that’s when UConn began to assert its dominance. The Huskies intensified their defense, forcing UK to miss 13 of its next 14 shots in the midst of a 26-3 UConn run to conclude the half. At the intermission, the Huskies were leading 48-26 and were well on their way to a 30-point victory and a spot in the national semifinals.
The win clinched UConn’s sixth consecutive Final Four bid, and the Huskies have now won 43 of their last 44 NCAA Tournament games played in the state of Connecticut, including nine of their last 10 games in Bridgeport.
Senior guard and two-time SEC Player of the Year A’dia Mathies led the Cats in scoring with 14 points, but it was not enough to propel the Cats past the Huskies and extend her career. UK shot just 31% from the field as a team for the game, including just four three-point field goals.
Mathies and fellow senior forward Brittany Henderson will exit the program as the winningest class in program history with 111 career victories and four trips to the NCAA Tournament, including three trips to the Elite Eight and a 10-4 tournament record.