For about 10 minutes, Louisville hung with UConn in the national championship game but in the end too much Tina Charles and too much defense was simply too much for the underdog Cardinals to contend with.

Charles had 25 points and a UConn NCAA tournament record 19 rebounds - the first player to have at least 15 points and 15 rebounds in the national championship game since Georgia's La'Keshia Frett in 1996.

"Tina Charles did an outstanding job of intimidating us," Louisville coach Jeff Walz said. "I thought she made us alter a lot of shots that we really didn't need to alter. We had no answer for her. I mean, she's the one I told you all two days ago that I was most concerned about. She's so active in the post.

"We can defend post players that like to stay on the block and just try and post up, because we've got some kids that will work and battle and fight to do that. But what she does so well is she just moves from block to block so quick that at her size we have a hard time trying to keep up with her. And then when you can't throw a 6-4 body at her, it just makes it really difficult for us to slow her down. The kid gets 25 and 19. I'm not sure you can do much better than that."

UConn's 22 point margin is the second highest in the national final.

Charles said she was motivated by the fact that she would be playing with senior guard Renee Montgomery for the last time. It certainly worked as Charles was simply unstoppable to earn Final Four Most Outstanding Player honors. Montgomery and Moore added 18 points each while Kalana Greene had nine points, leaving her one shy of 1,000. She also had the primary responsibility for guarding Louisville's Angel McCoughtry. McCoughty got her points, 23 of them, but needed 24 shots to do it.

There is some video of the celebration on the Register's website.

Here are the details of UConn's return. The Huskies are expected to land at Bradley around 3:15 p.m. and there will be a welcome home event at Gampel Pavilion beginning at 3 p.m. which wili include a replay of the championship game starting at 3:10 p.m. At 4:49 the players are expected to address the crowd and Geno Auriemma will get the microphone at 4:55.