North Carolina had a great game plan coming into the Fort Worth Region 1 semifinal of the Women’s NCAA Tournament against UConn on Friday.

Control Azzi Fudd and Sarah Strong.

It worked. For a while.

The No. 4 Tar Heels held the Huskies, the No. 1 overall seed in the tournament, to their lowest scoring first quarter of the season – 11 points – and limited the All-America duo of Fudd and Strong to four points on 2-of-9 shooting. North Carolina had a 12-11 lead at the end of the quarter.

But the momentum didn’t last, nor did the strategy. UConn (37-0) outscored North Carolina (28-8) by 22 points the rest of the game on the way to a 63-42 win and a date with No. 6 Notre Dame in the Elite Eight.

The Huskies, who led the nation in field-goal percentage at 52.5 and in 3-point percentage at 39.2 entering the Sweet 16 contest, started the game making just 5 of 24 shots (20.8%). But the Huskies regained their touch in the second quarter to end the half 13-of-36 shooting (36.1%) and with a 28-20 lead.

The 28 points were the Huskies’ lowest output of a half this season, but North Carolina – which had its own shooting woes – couldn’t recover against the defending national champions.

UConn typically has at least one big run each game, and in this one, it came to start the third quarter. The Huskies scored the first 12 points of the third and held North Carolina to 2-of-17 shooting and just five points to take a 48-25 lead heading into the final quarter.

The Tar Heels entered the game averaging 58.9 points per game and shooting 45.6% from the floor and 35.6 from long distance. In this one, North Carolina shot just 28.3% and 18.2%, respectively.

As also is typical, UConn forced 24 turnovers and stole the ball 18 times, scoring 17 points off of turnovers.

For the Huskies, Strong had her ninth season double-double with 21 points and 10 rebounds, adding two assists, two blocks and five steals.

Blanca Quinonez, named both the Freshman of the Year and the Sixth Woman of the Year in the Big East, scored 16 points and made four steals. Fudd had four rebounds, five assists and three steals but scored only 10 points on 4-of-12 shooting.

Indya Nivar was the standout for the Tar Heels, scoring 20 points of 8-of-15 shooting. She also totaled eight rebounds and four steals.

The rest of the team was 9-of-45 shooting.

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