MINNEAPOLIS — Before UConn’s two games in Bridgeport, the ones they needed to win to earn a 14th straight trip to the Final Four, the players took time to ruminate on the season they’d had.

There were injuries up and down the roster, including the three-month absence of star guard Paige Bueckers. There were humiliating losses to unranked teams. And on Monday, they’d lost key bench contributor Dorka Juhász to a gruesome wrist fracture.

Even for UConn, the 11-time national champion powerhouse, the odds of them making a run at the national championship seemed long during the low points. And this week, few pundits had them beating the reigning champion Stanford Cardinal on Friday without Juhász.

The players, and head coach Geno Auriemma, knew all of this. Instead of letting the adversity break them, they entered Friday night’s game stronger for it and outlasted Stanford in a defensive-minded battle, 63-58, to advance to the national championship game against South Carolina on Sunday, UConn’s first appearance there since 2016.

“So many years that we’ve come here, we’ve been a No. 1 seed, we had the best team going in. Everybody knew it, and it was, let’s just go do our thing and I don’t think anybody is going to be able to beat us if we play our A game,” Auriemma said.

“This year, I didn’t think any of that.”

UConn led Stanford for most of the game Friday night, but the advantage never felt safe.

Azzi Fudd and Aaliyah Edwards got into foul trouble in the second quarter, forcing Auriemma to dip into his reserves earlier than expected. Christyn Williams struggled to get into a shooting rhythm, going just 3-for-13 from the floor. Olivia Nelson-Ododa didn’t convert her first field goal until late in the third quarter, the result of a physical battle with Stanford’s Cameron Brink. And Paige Bueckers, UConn’s de-facto closer, was subbed out with 5:07 remaining in the game and later returned walking gingerly on her leg.

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So, when Stanford started to cut into UConn’s lead with under two minutes to play, it still seemed like anyone’s game. That was especially true after UConn, up 58-54 with 34 seconds left, beat Stanford’s press and Evina Westbrook inexplicably threw an errant pass out of bounds, giving the ball right back to the Cardinal.

In that moment, as Haley Jones hit a jumper at the other end, UConn could have caved. But this type of challenge was nothing they hadn’t seen before.

“We’re still not complete. We’re still missing Dorka and Aubrey [Griffin],” Nika Mühl said after the game. “We just stuck together, like every other time. I don’t think there was ever a doubt in ourselves.”

Fittingly, Fudd and Williams, who combined to shoot 24 percent from the floor Friday, sealed the win for UConn with clutch free throws down the stretch. Bueckers finished with a team-high 14 points, and Nelson-Ododa and Edwards had near double-doubles to help the Huskies out-rebound Stanford 46-37, but no player’s stat line jumped off the page.

Throughout UConn’s season, when one player went down, another stepped up. On Friday night, the recipe was the same, just more resolute after months of bending but not breaking.

Auriemma won’t think his team is the better of the two taking the floor Sunday night in the national championship game. South Carolina, the No. 1-ranked squad all season long, beat the Huskies (with Bueckers) by 16 points back in November.

UConn was a different team then. They were more complete, as the injuries hadn’t set in yet, but they were also more fallible. They hadn’t yet weathered the punches and come out better for it on the other side.

That other side, now, could very well include an NCAA trophy.

“Sometimes you don’t have to have the best team to win this game,” Auriemma said. “Sometimes you just have to play the best that night, and you have to make some big plays in big moments, and you do just enough with what you have.”

Hannah Withiam is the Managing Editor at Just Women’s Sports. She previously served as an editor at The Athletic and a reporter at the New York Post. Follow her on Twitter @HannahWithiam.

Longtime USWNT fixture Carli Lloyd took to Instagram Wednesday morning to announce that she’s pregnant with her first child. 

"Baby Hollins coming in October 2024!" she wrote. The caption framed a collaged image of baby clothes, an ultrasound photo, and syringes indicating what she described as a "rollercoaster" fertility journey.

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In a Women’s Health story published in tandem with Lloyd’s post, the Fox Sports analyst and correspondent opened up about her struggles with infertility and the lengthy IVF treatments she kept hidden from the public eye.

"Soccer taught me how to work hard, persevere, be resilient, and never give up. I would do whatever it took to prepare, and usually when I prepared, I got results," Lloyd told Women’s Health’s Amanda Lucci. "But I found out that I didn’t know much about this world. I was very naive to think that we wouldn’t have any issues getting pregnant. And so it began."

Lloyd went on to discuss her road to pregnancy in great detail, sharing the highs and lows of the process and expressing gratitude for the care and support her family and medical team provided along the way. She rounded out the piece with a nod toward others navigating the same challenges, encouraging people to share their own pregnancy journeys, painful as they may be.

"My story is currently a happy one, but I know there are other women who are facing challenges in their pregnancy journey. I see you and I understand your pain," she said. "My hope is that more and more women will speak up about this topic, because their stories helped me. I also wish for more resources, funding, and education around fertility treatments. There is much to be done, and I hope I can play a role in helping."

The 41-year-old New Jersey native retired from professional soccer in 2021, closing out her decorated career with 316 international appearances, the second-most in USWNT history, in addition to 134 international goals. A legend on the field, Lloyd walked away from the game with two World Cups, two Olympic gold medals, and two FIFA Player of the Year awards.

On Tuesday, FIFPRO announced the launch of Project ACL, a three-year research initiative designed to address a steep uptick in ACL injuries across women's professional football.

Project ACL is a joint venture between FIFPRO, England’s Professional Footballers’ Association (PFA), Nike, and Leeds Beckett University. While the central case study will focus on England’s top-flight Women's Super League, the findings will be distributed around the world.

ACL tears are between two- and six-times more likely to occur in women footballers than men, according to The Guardian. And with both domestic and international programming on the rise for the women’s game, we’ve seen some of the sport's biggest names moved to the season-ending injury list with ACL-related knocks.

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Soccer superstars like Vivianne Miedema, Beth Mead, Catarina Macario, Marta, and England captain Leah Williamson have all struggled with their ACLs in recent years, though all have since returned to the field. In January, Chelsea and Australia forward Sam Kerr was herself sidelined with the injury, kicking off a year of similar cases across women’s professional leagues. And just yesterday, the Spirit announced defender Anna Heilferty would miss the rest of the NWSL season with a torn ACL. The news comes less than two weeks after Bay FC captain Alex Loera went down with the same injury. 

Project ACL will closely study players in the WSL, monitoring travel, training, and recovery practices to look for trends that could be used to prevent the injury in the future. Availability of sports science and medical resources within individual clubs will be taken into account throughout the process.

ACL injuries in women's football have long outpaced the same injury in the men's game, but resources for specialized prevention and treatment still lag behind. Investment in achieving a deeper, more specialized understanding of the problem should hopefully alleviate the issue both on and off the field.

With recent transfers Talia von Oelhoffen and Kiki Iriafen joining first-team All-American JuJu Watkins and the nation’s No. 1 recruiting class at USC next season, the Trojans look to transition from an up-and-coming squad to a legitimate title contender. 

Former Oregon State graduate student von Oelhoffen is the latest collegiate talent to commit to the program, announcing her transfer Monday via ESPN. She follows ex-Stanford leading-scorer Iriafen in the jump to the pair’s one-time Pac-12 rival.

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The 5-foot-11 Washington native was a two-time All-Pac-12 guard during her time at Oregon State. But after the recent dissolution of the Pac-12, the Corvallis side found themselves without a permanent home conference going forward. Many big name players opted to take their skill elsewhere as a result, with von Oelhoffen’s fellow ex-Beaver Raegan Beers announcing her own departure to Oklahoma on Monday.

According to DraftKings, USC is now tied with UConn for the second-best betting odds to win the 2025 NCAA women’s tournament. Dawn Staley’s tested South Carolina side, poised for a repeat performance, holds down the number one spot.

Last year, LSU loaded up in the transfer portal after beating Iowa to win the 2023 national championship. The Tigers were clear favorites coming into the 2023-24 season, but were bounced in the Elite Eight by Caitlin Clark’s Hawkeyes. Shortly thereafter, star transfer Hailey Van Lith opted to transfer a second time, this time signing with TCU. 

Yet while history proves that an excess of star power doesn’t always translate to on-court chemistry, on paper, USC sure looks ready to hold their own — in 2025 and beyond.

The United States and Mexico have withdrawn their joint bid to host the 2027 Women’s World Cup, per a Monday afternoon release from U.S. Soccer and the Mexican Football Federation.

According to the statement, they will instead focus on developing a "more equitable" bid for the 2031 tournament, with the ultimate goal of "eliminating investment disparities" between the men’s and women’s tournaments.

The federations went on to cite the upcoming 2026 Men’s World Cup in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico as an opportunity to build support for local infrastructure, improve audience engagement, and scale up media and partnership deals in preparation to "host a record-breaking tournament in 2031."

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"Hosting a World Cup tournament is a huge undertaking — and having additional time to prepare allows us to maximize its impact across the globe," said U.S. Soccer President Cindy Parlow Cone. "Shifting our bid will enable us to host a record-breaking Women’s World Cup in 2031 that will help to grow and raise the level of the women’s game both here at home as well as across the globe."

The decision leaves just Brazil and a joint bid from Belgium, Germany, and the Netherlands in the running for the 2027 host spot. Brazil — the rumored frontrunner — has never hosted a Women’s World Cup, while Germany hosted the 2011 tournament as a solo venture. 

Furthermore, this postponement doesn’t mean the U.S. is a shoo-in for 2031, as it's been previously reported that 2022 UEFA Women's EURO host England is considering their own Women's World Cup bid. FIFA is scheduled to confirm the winning bid after the FIFA Congress votes on May 17th.