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UConn-Notre Dame Newspaper Front Pages: A Study In Contrasts

For all the understandable talk about the decline of the newspapers, for all the hand-wringing over online paywalls, for all the justified financial concerns, this remains: if an event mainly impacting two cities dominates the front page of both cities’ newspapers, you can still be sure it was a big deal. Last night’s 72-63 Notre Dame upset of UConn at the women’s Final Four? Big deal.

It wasn’t even the only upset of the night: Texas A&M edged top-seeded Stanford 63-62 in the other semifinal, setting up a championship game of Notre Dame-Texas A&M that almost no one (if anyone at all) could have predicted. But knocking out the defending champs is big, knocking out the two-time defending champs is bigger, and knocking out the two-time defending champs when they have the nation’s best player in Maya Moore and beat you three times earlier this season? That deserves a headline like, say, this:

Finally, indeed. Back over in Connecticut, though, the feeling was a little different.

And while anything can happen in any given game, and one should especially be prepared for anything when two teams are as familiar with one another as Notre Dame and UConn are…this was still a stunning end. UConn’s been there, done that, which is supposed to matter in pressure-packed games like this.

But last night, it didn’t, and for that headline combined with a photo brilliantly illustrating the age-old “thrill of victory/agony of defeat” juxtaposition, we’ll give the Courant’s front page the edge. Now all that’s left to do is see what the Tribune comes up with for the title game.