PHOENIX -- The game was decided by 28 points. The story it told was decided by what happened at midcourt when the buzzer sounded.

Dawn Staley walked to Cori Close and embraced her. The two coaches stood together for a moment that the arena could not quite contain -- two women who had spent their professional lives in the same sport, shaped by it in different ways, arriving at this championship game as rivals and leaving it, in the postgame images, as something that looks more like colleagues acknowledging what the game demands from all its participants.

This paper wrote Saturday about Geno Auriemma losing his composure at midcourt and what the confrontation revealed about the sport's power shift. What Sunday revealed was the other side of that story: what it looks like when two coaches carry their losses and victories with the weight of people who understand what the game costs and choose to honor the cost rather than refuse it.

Staley met reporters. She did not perform. "Obviously, we got smacked today," she said. "We got to figure out how we smack back and put ourselves in the position where we're hoisting the trophy." [1] Three sentences. No hedging, no contextualizing, no attempt to soften what 79-51 means when you are the program that had been in four of the last five championship games. They got smacked. She said so.

Then she said the thing that will outlast the score. "I'm always happy for people that worked hard in this game, who are really quality people," Staley said, referring to Close. "I want good things to happen for them." [2]

Two Careers, One Decade

Close and Staley are separated by less than a decade in age. Both built their programs from below the sport's established hierarchy. Staley took over South Carolina in 2008, a program that had never won a championship and barely registered in the national conversation. Close took over UCLA in 2011, a program that had not been to the Final Four in 30 years.

The difference is that Staley cracked the ceiling faster and is already on the other side of it. Three titles. Four championship games. A dynasty that now defines the sport's standard. Close spent a decade building -- Big Ten titles, but no Final Four until this year. Her roster of seniors and graduates chose UCLA knowing that Close was the reason, and they were right. Sunday was the vindication of a slower clock.

What Staley's postgame words did was refuse to make Close's achievement smaller by treating the loss as a tragedy. She lost by 28 points. She called it what it was. Then she named the person who beat her as someone who deserved what they got. This is a harder thing to do than it appears, particularly in a sport where the identity of the losing coach has been built around the idea that losing here is unthinkable.

What Auriemma's Confrontation Clarified

The contrast with last week's semifinal requires no subtlety. Auriemma, after losing to Staley by 14 points, confronted her at midcourt with accusations about a handshake that video footage showed had occurred. The 24-hour cultural reaction -- Stephen A. Smith, Lil Wayne, millions of impressions -- produced a verdict about who owns the sport now that the scoreboard had started. The confrontation was not a lapse. This paper argued then that it was a reveal: a 72-year-old man who has not processed what it means to no longer be at the center of the sport he helped define.

Sunday's championship game was a second data point in what is becoming a thesis. Close won with graciousness what Auriemma lost with ego. Staley demonstrated the same quality in defeat that she demonstrated in victory -- she is accountable to the result, and she does not need the result to be other than it was to maintain her dignity.

This is not a simple story about good people and bad people. Auriemma's 11 championships represent a kind of sustained excellence that the sport has not seen from any other coach. Close's 15-year build represents something different: patience of a kind that requires believing in outcomes you cannot yet see. What distinguishes Sunday is that Close won without Auriemma's advantages -- without UConn's recruiting dominance, without the sport's most established brand. She won with seniors who stayed.

The Handshake's Weight

The Auriemma-Staley confrontation generated more social media engagement than the championship game it preceded. The Close-Staley handshake will not generate the same numbers. It is quieter than a confrontation. It does not have the same virality as an argument.

But the handshake is the thing the sport needs to carry. Women's basketball has spent three years proving it belongs at the center of American sports culture -- through ratings, through attendance, through the Caitlin Clark phenomenon and the WNBA expansion and the television contracts. The sport does not belong to one coach or one program anymore. Sunday confirmed that structural reality again. But it also showed what the sport looks like when its best coaches treat the work as something larger than their own ambitions.

Staley will return to South Carolina. She has recruits committed, a program built for continuity, and the specific knowledge of what 79-51 feels like. The dynasty is not ended by a single loss. Dynasties are ended by years of not adjusting, and Staley adjusts.

Close has a championship. Her players scattered into careers -- Betts to the WNBA, Jaquez to wherever she chooses, Rice into another year or a professional future. The program she built will have to be rebuilt. That is what championships require.

The two coaches embraced at midcourt and said, without saying it, what the sport has become: large enough that more than one person can win it, dignified enough that losing it does not have to be a catastrophe, and real enough that the people inside it can honor what it demands of all of them.

Staley said it plainest. She always does. "We got smacked." And then: "I want good things to happen for them."

-- AMARA OKONKWO, Lagos