GLENDALE, Ariz. (AP) — A basketball beatdown. A coaching clinic. A double-digit domination.
Take one guess who finished off a romp through college basketball again. You bet, it’s UConn — a team built to win now, and often, and by a lot every time it takes the court.
Coach Dan Hurley's Huskies delivered the latest of their suffocating hoops performances Monday night, smothering Purdue for a 75-60 victory to become the first team since 2007 to capture back-to-back national championships.
Tristen Newton scored 20 points for the Huskies, who won their 12th straight March Madness game — not a single one of them decided by fewer than 13 points.
UConn was efficient on offense but won this with defense. The Huskies (37-3) limited the country’s second-best 3-point shooting team to a mere seven shots behind the arc and only a single make, while happily allowing 7-foot-4 AP Player of the Year Zach Edey to go for 37 points on 25 shot attempts.
UConn won its sixth overall title and joined the 2006-07 Florida Gators and the 1991-92 Duke Blue Devils as just the third team to repeat since John Wooden’s UCLA dynasty of the 1960s and ’70s.
“I just think it’s the best two-year run in a very, very long time, just because of everything we lost from last year’s team,” said Hurley, whose top two scorers from last year now play in the NBA.
“To lose that much and do it again, it’s got to be as impressive a two-year run since at least prior to Duke.”
he 2024 Huskies are the sixth team to win all six tournament games by double-digit margins. They won those games by a grand total of 140 points, blowing past the 1996 Kentucky team, which won its six by 129.
In a matchup of two top seeds, they wore down the Boilermakers (34-5), who made it this far a year after becoming just the second No. 1 in the history of March Madness to fall in the first round. But Purdue left the same way it came — still looking for the program’s first NCAA title.