The Daily Campus

Issue date: 4/8/09 Section: March Madness

Renee Montgomery hoists the National Championship trophy over her head in celebration. The Huskies defeated Louisville Tuesday night in St. Louis to earn the trophy, their first since 2004.

Maya Moore rises up for a layup against Louisville's Angel McCoughtry in the Huskies' National Championship victory Tuesday night. Moore scored 18 points and grabbed nine rebounds while McCoughtry registered 23 points of her own. Louisville's All-American guard shot just 9-for-24 from the field, however, and ended her career without ever defeating UConn.

ST. LOUIS ­- With every win the UConn women's basketball team accumulated this season, the pressure mounted. Each one brought on more comparisons to previous championship teams and eventually, UConn's two previous undefeated teams from 1994-95 and 2001-02. Coach Geno Auriemma said that teams in the past weren't able to handle

Tuesday night, the 2008-09 Huskies showed they could handle all the pressure and etched their place into UConn basketball history, winning the program's sixth National Championship with a crushing 76-54 victory over Louisville at the Scottrade Center in St. Louis.

"Well, there's nothing that I'm more proud of than the fact that especially these three [Tina Charles, Renee Montgomery and Maya Moore] came in every day from September 1 until today and gave me everything they had every single day," Auriemma said. "And, like I told them, I hope I gave them as much back, and tonight we gave you the best of what we got."

UConn's perfect season came in unprecedented fashion, as the Huskies won every single one of their 39 games by double-digits and had an average margin of victory of 30.5 points on the year. Both feats are firsts for a college basketball team - womens or men's. The 22-point margin of victory over the Cardinals Tuesday night was also the team's biggest in a National Championship game.

UConn center Tina Charles, who said she was nervous before the game, saved the biggest performance of her career for the most important game she has played in, turning in a dominating 25-point 19-rebound performance. While Moore and Montgomery struggled from the field in the first half, shooting a combined 7-for-20, Charles stole the show. The performance helped earn Charles the Final Four's Most Outstanding Player award.

"Tina did such an amazing job on the offensive and defensive end," said freshman guard Tiffany Hayes, who finished with five points and four assists. "She blocked shots, got so many rebounds, it was ridiculous. On the offensive end, she took it to them and finished all of her lay-ups, got and-ones. She was just an all-around player tonight."

Charles, who let out a Kevin Garnett-esque "Anything is possible!" as she was conducting a post-game interview, had another special message after the game: "President Barack Obama, I'll be seeing you soon." For Charles, who was relegated to the bench for the entire 2008 NCAA Tournament, the championship meant a great deal.

"This is my first one and just the fact that it's with this team," Charles said. "And when I say that it's with this team and a lot of people probably don't understand it's just all the hard work, everything we've been through - it's all the crying and everything, all the emotions of tonight."

For the game's opening 10 minutes, it looked as though the Cardinals would be able to hang tight with the Huskies, something they could not do in the team's two previous meetings - both blowouts of 28 points or more.

Louisville forward Angel McCoughtry carried the Cardinals on her back over the game's first nine minutes, a span in which she scored 11 of her team's first 15 points and Louisville took leads on four separate occasions.

"I just wanted to help us keep up, because they can score so fast," McCoughtry said.

The Huskies locked down on McCoughtry from that point, holding her scoreless over the half's final 11 minutes. During that span, the Huskies went on a 26-10 run to head into halftime with a 39-24 lead.

The Cardinals faded in the second half as shots began to fall for Montgomery and Moore, who both finished with 18 points. McCoughtry finished with a team-high 23 points, but shot just 9-for-24 in the game. Unlike the Cardinals' previous game against Oklahoma, the supporting cast fell short. Forward Candyce Bingham was the only other Louisville player in double digits, with 10 points.

Montgomery, who had been denied championships in her first three seasons with the team, finished her career the way UConn stars Rebecca Lobo, Sue Bird and Diana Taurasi did - by winning a National Championship in the final game of her career. She described the feeling as like "being in heaven."

"I think for the first time we actually can just stop and really enjoy the win for more than a couple days," Montgomery said. "And I think that's just the biggest thing that we can actually [do] - because I think the mentality of our team is we're happy with what we did because we're always looking to the future. And now, I think we have, you know, time to enjoy this win and all the other ones."

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