UCLA women’s basketball is headed to the Final Four of the NCAA tournament for the second time in school history — a back-to-back appearance.
On Sunday, the No. 1–seed Bruins came back from a halftime deficit to secure a win over the No. 3–seed Duke Blue Devils, 70-58.
After Sunday’s game, coach Cori Close told Sports Central what it means to be on this run with many on the team in their final season, including seniors Lauren Betts, Gabriela Jaquez and Kiki Rice and graduate students Angela Dugalić, Gianna Kneepkens and Charlisse Leger-Walker.
“I just love them,” Close said. “I’m just watching them be dream chasers; I’m watching them conquer hard things. It’s who they’re becoming; it’s who they’ve impacted. That is what makes me most proud, and the winning is a byproduct of the internal things happening first.”
The Bruins will face No. 1 seed Texas in the Final Four. They'll play on Friday, April 3, at 6:30 p.m. PT. The game will air on ESPN, from Phoenix, Arizona. Details about the free watch party at Pauley Pavilion are in the sidebar on the right of this page.
A historic run
It’s been another blistering season for the Bruins, who are 35-1 overall. The team finished the regular season 18-0 in the Big Ten Conference and won the Big Ten tournament for the second year in a row in early March. The media chose Rice as the tournament’s Most Outstanding Player.
Post-season conference awards saw Betts named Big Ten Player of the Year and Defensive Player of the Year, the first athlete to win both in the same season. Dugalić was named Big Ten Sixth Player of the Year and Close Coach of the Year. Sienna Betts, Lauren’s younger sister, was named to the Big Ten All-Freshman Team; Rice and Betts were chosen for the All-Big Ten First Team and the Big Ten All-Defensive Team; Jaquez and Kneepkens were named to the All-Big Ten Second Team; and Leer-Walker was named a Big Ten Women’s Basketball Sportsmanship Honoree.
And the accolades for this storied Bruins team keep coming. Just last week, on March 26, Betts was named a Naismith Women’s Player of the Year finalist, and Close a finalist for coach of the year.
“I’m just so proud of this program, the amount of people that pour into getting us to this place every single day — like, coaches, players, support staff, practice guys, assistants, managers. There's just so many people that help us,” Betts said Sunday after the Bruins defeated Duke. “This program means everything to me. And Coach Cori — I don't want to get emotional, but she means a lot to me. She's helped all of us so much. I'm just very grateful for her.”
Mental game
As the Bruins prepare for their next matchup this coming weekend, they are staying cool.
“We just have the mentality of this being a business trip,” Ducalic said Sunday. “And I honestly can't emphasize that enough. It's just, like, we're staying neutral, the small circle that we constantly talk about. Really, the most important thing to us is our team and our staff and whoever is in that inner circle. Everything else outside of that doesn't really matter in this case. … Tomorrow is going to be a new day, and we're going to have a new opponent, and that's going to be our next focus.”
Remembering the women’s 1978 national championship
UCLA women’s basketball program captured its first — and, so far, only — national championship in 1978, an era before the NCAA tournament existed. That historic team included groundbreaking players, including Ann Meyers Drysdale, Denise Curry and Anita Ortega and was led by legendary head coach Billie Moore. Read more about them in UCLA Magazine.
