Raleigh, N.C. ? Angel McCoughtry and Candyce Bingham remembered the crushing feeling they had in the locker room last year after Louisville blew a huge lead and lost in the NCAA Tournament.

This time, the Cardinals gathered at midcourt to celebrate with a few screams of joy after the horn.

McCoughtry had 22 points and 12 rebounds while Bingham sparked the decisive second-half run to help the Cardinals beat Baylor, 56-39, sending them to the first regional championship game in school history.

Bingham had 15 points and 15 rebounds for the Cardinals (32-4), the No. 3 seed in the Raleigh Regional. That included a pair of critical three-pointers during Louisville’s 12-0 spurt midway through the half that finally blunted a gritty performance by the second-seeded Bears (29-6).

Louisville, which closed the game on an 18-2 run, advanced to Monday night’s regional final to face top-seeded Maryland, which beat Vanderbilt later Saturday. It will be an emotional matchup for second-year Louisville coach Jeff Walz, who spent five years as an assistant at Maryland and was part of the Terrapins’ 2006 national championship team.

“As excited as I am, I’m even more excited for these kids because we work them hard, I’m telling you,” Walz said. “We have got to be the tougher team on the floor. The first six minutes of the second half, we weren’t. They got loose balls, they beat us down the floor in transition. After we got that straightened out, I thought we started to play the way we needed to play.”

It was a reversal of last year’s frustrating performance in this same position. In that game, the Cardinals — in the round of 16 first the first time — blew an 18-point first-half lead against top-seeded North Carolina and lost, 78-74.

“We are not going to go back in that locker room and have that feeling again,” she said. “Me and Candyce put the team on our backs because we know how it feels.”

Maryland 78, Vanderbilt 74

Raleigh, N.C. — Marissa Coleman scored a career-high 42 points, including the go-ahead basket with 27.9 seconds left, and Maryland rallied from 18 down.