MOORE THE HERO FOR UCONN
SAN ANTONIO -- For the first 20 minutes of Tuesday's NCAA championship game,
Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007, Connecticut's Maya Moore looked nothing like the national player of the year.
The 6-0 junior missed shots. She threw the ball away. She had two points as the Huskies staggered and stumbled into halftime trailing Stanford 20-12.
But in the second half, Moore showed why many consider her one of the most gifted players in women's history. She scored 21 points and led the UConn charge that brought a seventh national title in a 53-47 victory that extended the Huskies' winning streak to 78 games.
"We all recognized we weren't ourselves and we just had to leave that in the locker room,
Microsoft Office Enterprise 2007," Moore said of the first half. "But there was no fear. We're champions. We knew a run was coming. ... We knew we weren't going to finish the game the way we started."
Moore turned the game around during a three-minute charge early in the second half. She put back a missed shot, assisted on a basket by Kalana Greene, drilled a three-pointer from the top of the key, nailed a jumper from the foul line and then scored on a drive. That drove a 17-2 run and put the game in UConn's hands.
"The goal was to stop her from getting going,
Office 2007 Enterprise," Stanford forward Nnemkadi Ogwumike said. "We did that in the first half, not so well in the second."
After missing six of eight shots in the first half, Moore hit seven of 10 in the second and was named the Final Four's most outstanding player. She scored 34 Sunday.
"That's what great players do,
Windows 7 Pro Key, and they do it at the most pressure-packed times," UConn coach Geno Auriemma said. "Maya is a great scorer, and you get that reputation by scoring points under pressure."
Andy Gardiner,
Office Pro 2007, USA TODAY
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