Stanford and Arizona punched their tickets to the women’s NCAA championship game. It will be the first time the title game will be played between two Pacific-12 teams.

Stanford edged South Carolina 66-65 in a battle of No. 1 seeds. The Gamecocks forced a Cardinal turnover with six seconds left and quickly brought it the other way. Brea Beal missed a contested layup before Aliyah Boston’s putback clanked off the back of the rim as time expired.

“The margin of error is that small,” South Carolina head coach Dawn Staley said.  “It’s that small competing for a national championship, winning a national championship. It won’t be our last time being in this situation. Next year we just got to practice with that margin of error in mind.”

Haley Jones gave Stanford the lead with a jumper off an offensive rebound with 32 seconds remaining. She finished with 24 points on 11-of-14 shooting.

The Cardinal led by five with a minute and a half left before Destanni Henderson converted on a 3-point play and a 3-pointer to give the Gamecocks the momentary one-point edge.

Henderson tallied 18 points and five rebounds. Zia Cooke led the way for SC with 25 points. Boston, who battled foul trouble after she picked up her fourth in the final seconds of the third, amassed a double-double with 11 points and 16 rebounds.

Behind Jones, Lexie Hull recorded 18 points and 13 rebounds for her first double-double of season. Ashten Prechtel contributed nine points and eight rebounds.

“It was a battle,” Stanford coach Tara VanDerveer said. “It was a really tough game where we had to work really hard. It is nice to have a little karma go your way.”

South Carolina raced out to a 15-6 lead midway though the first quarter before Stanford scored 16 of the next 18 points. The Cardinal held a six-point advantage at halftime.

Stanford, the top overall seed, converted on five of its eight 3-point attempts. The Cardinal have knocked down 55 triples, the most in a single NCAA Tournament. Its defense also stepped up as it blocked 12 shots, which ties the most by a Cardinal team an NCAA Tournament game since 2000. Stanford limited South Carolina to 11-for-37 in the paint and just 33% on layups, according to ESPN Stats and Info.

Third-seeded Arizona pulled off a wire-to-wire 69-59 victory over top-seed UConn. The Wildcats, playing in their first ever Final Four, dominated on the defensive end as they handed the Huskies their first double-digit loss in the NCAA Tournament since 2007.

UConn, who scored a season-low 59 points, was held to eight field goals in the first half, while it turned the ball over nine times. The Huskies were also limited to a season-low 22 points in the opening 20 minutes.

“It was incredibly difficult for us to get anything done,” UConn head coach Geno Auriemma said. “The intensity level that they played with and the aggressiveness on the defensive end; we just didn’t respond the way I hoped we would. That’s two games in a row now that we faced that kind of pressure, and I think it took its toll.”

After Arizona opened up a 14-point lead late in the third quarter, UConn pulled back within five with less than a minute and a half to go. The Wildcats went 7-for-10 from the free-throw line down the stretch.

“This was a really hard game,” Arizona head coach Adia Barnes said. “We did not have any pressure. It’s a much easier situation to be us than it is UConn because the program is so good, you’re expected to win, and that’s hard. I’m just happy; we got hot at the right time in the tournament. Everybody has stepped up in different ways.”

Coming off back-to-back 30-point games, Aari McDonald led the way once again for Arizona. She poured in 26 points, including 4-for-9 from deep and 8-for-11 from the free throw line. She also pulled down seven rebounds.

“Aari dominated the entire game, start to finish,” Auriemma said. “We had no answer for her.”

Sam Thomas and Cate Reese were also in double figures. Thomas tallied 12 points and five rebounds, and Reese posted 11 points.

Christyn Williams led the way for the Huskies with 20 points and five rebounds. She fouled out with just under four minutes remaining on a play where she did not make contact with McDonald.

AP National Player of the Year Paige Bueckers netted 18 points after she was limited to five points in the first half. She finished with 108 points in the NCAA Tournament, the third most by a freshman in the tourney (behind Tamika Catchings’s 111 in 1998 and Cheryl Miller’s 109 in 1983).

UConn, who last won the title in 2016, is in its longest drought without a championship since its first crown in 1995.

Looking ahead to the all-Pac-12 title game, it will be the third meeting between Stanford and Arizona this season. The Cardinal, who is in the title game for the first time in 11 years and is in search of its first title since 1992, won both meetings by an average of 20.5 points. The championship game is set for Sunday at 6 p.m. on ESPN.