As she's done many times before in her Rutgers career, senior Cappie Pondexter took her team on her back last night.
Refusing to let her last career game at the Louis Brown Athletic Center go down as a loss, Pondexter carried her team past an 18-point first-half deficit to an eventual 48-42 win over Connecticut in front of a sell-out Senior Night crowd that ensured Rutgers its second straight Big East outright regular-season title - no ties, no coin flips.
"It was rough but we had to continue to believe," Pondexter said. "Every time I went into the huddle I told those guys just to focus, to believe and take it one possession at a time."
Still trailing the Huskies by one despite a dazzling second-half comeback and the shot clock winding down, Pondexter stepped up for a three-pointer with 6:33 to play in the game that gave the No. 7 Scarlet Knights (24-3, 16-0) their first lead since it was 3-2 with a minute gone by in the game.
At that point, neither Big East power would score for the next several minutes, before No. 8 UConn (26-4. 14-2) knotted the score at 42 on a Barbara Turner free throw.
Kia Vaughn was then perfect from the line on the Knights' next possession, putting RU up three with 44 seconds to play, and Pondexter then went 1-of-2 the next time down to make it a two-possession game.
The fading Huskies sent the ball to hot-shooting Ann Strother in the left corner with the clock winding down, but the senior's desperate three-point attempt rimmed out as Connecticut watched its seemingly insurmountable first-half lead become a mere memory.
"We needed to get a big lead and execute to withstand the pressure that was coming," Connecticut head coach Geno Auriemma said. "That's the way we've beaten them in the past. But we let one play go into another into another and it just completely got away from us.
"Cappie made the plays that she needed to make and we didn't," Auriemma said. "They deserved to win, they really did."
The Knights had all but buried themselves early, allowing a charged-up UConn squad to take a 10-point lead with 11:47 to go in the first half. The Huskies stretched it to as many as 18 in the first, before RU was able to jump-start the offense thanks to Pondexter's relentless shooting.
With Connecticut up 26-8, RU went on a 15-2 run and took advantage of seven Huskies turnovers to chop the lead to five (30-25) going into the break.
It was thanks to Rutgers' "55" press that they were able to come up with some key turnovers and start to chip away at the lead. With Ajavon in foul trouble, sophomore guard Tudy Reed came off the bench for RU and provided a defensive spark.
"I thought the '55' was a big difference," Reed said. "We put on a lot of pressure. The '55' was major for us."
Pondexter's 26-point effort was the fuel for the Knights. Behind her, Matee Ajavon and Carson were the next highest contributors with six apiece. The Knights survived the game despite 26-percent shooting from the floor in contrast to UConn's 42-percent.
Rutgers' 48-point performance was still only one off its season low of 47 in their mid-season loss to Temple.
The win improved the Knights to an unblemished 16-0 in the Big East and gave them their 12th straight win. It was also their 24th straight conference win, and will slot RU as the top seed in this weekend's conference tournament in addition to its first-round bye.
The win marks the first time Connecticut has been swept by a team in regular season play since Miami was its opponent in the 1992-93 season. It's also the first time a team other than the Huskies has won back-to-back titles.
"This teaches us how to play an entire game, not to give up," sophomore guard Essence Carson said. "We were down and we definitely could've given in and crumbled under the pressure. We just looked at the picture, [and] chipped away at the points one play at a time."
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