South Carolina won its first national championship since 2017 on Sunday night, vanquishing Connecticut with a decisive 64-49 victory. The Gamecocks, the top overall seed in the women’s bracket, secured a heady 9-point lead in the first four minutes of the game. From there, led by junior forward Aliyah Boston, previously dubbed “the hardest person in America to guard” by UConn’s coach, South Carolina bulldozed its way to a win. The victory was reminiscent of the team’s season as a whole, scoring an average 70 points per game and winning 35 total games, the most in the university’s history. The Gamecocks climbed their way up to the title game after dispatching Louisville 72-59 on Friday. Connecticut’s Huskies fought back fiercely in the second half of Sunday’s game, with strong rebounds allowing them to briefly surge toward closing the gap. But the final act of a career-high 26 points from senior guard Destanni Henderson allowed the Gamecocks to break away, sealing the Huskies’ doom with a double-digit lead from which they never recovered.