Let’s remember Diana Taurasi’s best performance at UConn

It was during the NCAA Tournament that Geno Auriemma first began speaking iconic yet simple phrases. “We got Diana.

And that statement was probably by no means truer than the 2003 Final Four against Texas.

Diana Taurasi – otherwise, certainly one of the greatest women's basketball players of all time – called her off her playing career on Tuesday night. Tell the time: “I didn't have it for me. That was when I knew it was time to leave.”

Taurashi is leaving WNBA Perhaps as its most iconic player. In addition to being the league's greatest goals scorer ever, her resume includes three WNBA titles, 14 all-WNBA selections, 11 All-Star nods and two Final MVP trophies. She scored the WNBA five times. She won the Rookie of the Year in 2004 and the MVP in 2009. She owns six Olympic gold medals.

Before she breaks the record, wins the title and destroys the doorliterally) Taurasi helped the turn in the WNBA, spending 20 seasons with Phoenix Mercury. uconn As a standard for sports. She led the Husky to three straight national championships, twice as many of the best players in the Final Four and was named Player of the Year twice. In her four seasons performing at Auriemma, UConn had an astounding victory record of 139-8.

While wearing the Husky's third place in the early 2000s, there are several different games that allow you to claim Taurasi's best outing.

What about when she lights up TCU In the NCAA Tournament, did you score a highest 35 points on 12 of 17 shootings? What about when she rocks seven 3-pointers in a regular season victory? Rutgers? Or when she posts 26 points and 12 rebounds with sweet 16 wins at Boston College?

Please remember that Half-court shot she hit Do you have Kara Lawson's hand on her face with a buzzer against Tennessee? Or when she blocks six shots and grabs 14 rebounds in a USC victory?

They all deserve consideration.

But no.

Taurasi's best performance as UConn guard came in the 2003 national semi-finals in front of over 28,000 fans at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta against the Jodiconratt's Longhorns.

This will go down as a top game as a member of Taurasi's Husky for several reasons, but the main one of them is that she is the only return starter from the 2002 national title team, and she saves This means that you cannot get the opportunity to repeat it without doing so. Days against Texas. There were no Sue Bird, no Swin Cash or Tamica Williams. Taurasi was a peculiar reason that the Husky were in a position to win the game. It was her willpower that put them on top.

After connecting to a tough close range jumper while being fouled, Taurasi knocked down a free throw to close the score. Still, Texas led UConn, 66-63 and played 2:56, as they did during most of the second half. After her teammates drained a free throw, Taurasi put the team on his back and then hit a rainbow 3 pointer far beyond the top of the key a little later, giving the Husky the first lead of the game, 67-66 I gave it.

UConn was never kicked out again.

Taurasi put out an assist before knocking out the ball from Alisha Saa during a layup attempt just before the buzzer, at the final moments of the game when the Husky won 71-69. Taurasi held the ball tightly as a smirk grew across her face.

Needless to say, victory wouldn't happen without Taurashi, a trash-filled Southern California security guard who idolised Magic Johnson as a youth. Taurasi scored 11 of the 26 points in the final nine minutes of the game, helping UConn erase the nine-point deficit. The victory marked the 500th in Auriemma's career, bringing Uconn back into the title game and defeating rival Tennessee in his fourth national championship.

Along the way, Taurasi played with flares and glamour. She untook Duke and torture Tennessee. And for a team that wanted to be a competitor like Texas and thought maybe they had the opportunity to grasp greatness, she tore her heart apart without mercy.

“If you have three or five minutes left in the game, you have Diana Taurasi, so you have a higher chance of winning the game.” Auriemma once told ESPN. “She does whatever she has to do to win the game. She has to do exactly the small or big things she has to do. She's not afraid of the consequences of a failure.”

In addition to her 26 points, Taurashi had four assists, four rebounds and one block in 38 minutes. The Associated Press made a call “Ankle and back pain.” But Taurashi never showed that she was troubled by it.

Talking To the New York Times Before playing UConn that year's National Championship Game, former Tennessee assistant coach Mickey Demos said of Taurasi:

Isn't it how we all felt because of the final moments of those last four clashes, and almost every big moment in her career at the University, the Olympics and the WNBA? There was no stage that was too big for Taurasi. The deficits her team faced were insurmountable. Shots were not impossible. The victory was unquestionable.

Because UConn, Mercury and Team USA had Taurashi. And no one else did.