UCLA women's basketball cemented its legacy led by a group of seniors that stuck together
· Yahoo Sports
PHOENIX — Lauren Betts has said she manifested all of this. On the eve of Sunday’s national championship game, she hoped she’d dream about cutting down the nets. It’s been on her mind all season, and she wasn’t shy about sharing that.
Betts wanted UCLA to win a national championship this year. She believed the senior-laden roster had more than enough talent to get the job done. These Bruins tasted the Final Four a season ago, but they also realized how much more it would take to make it to the final Sunday of the season.
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“We had everybody you could possibly want on a team,” Betts said. “(We were) so skilled at every single position that I think the maturity to come in and sacrifice yourself and your ego and be able to put that aside for moments like these, it makes it so worth it.
“At the end of the day, no one's going to really care about how much you averaged this season when you have a freaking ring around your finger. No one cares.”
The rings might take a few months to actually get delivered to Betts and her teammates, but the championship she manifested did arrive on Sunday. UCLA beat South Carolina, 79-51, to win the program’s first NCAA women’s basketball championship. It came in head coach Cori Close’s 15th season, a little later than she may have liked but entirely deserved. The game wasn’t as close as the final score indicated; it was a beatdown so complete the game felt over by the midpoint of the third quarter. The fourth quarter doubled as a coronation. By the time the final buzzer hit, it was a full-on celebration.
Betts grew emotional as she celebrated with her younger sister, Sienna. Kiki Rice and Gabriela Jaquez — the two guards who have served as the heartbeat of this UCLA team for years — made sure they took photos with each other’s families. Charlisse Leger-Walker couldn’t quite believe it all was real just yet, one year removed from a debilitating knee injury that cost her the entire 2024-25 season. The rest of the Bruins walked around in championship hats and T-shirts, giddy and giggling.
“It's just so rare in life that you can start a journey with a group of people and really envision something, then trying to reverse-engineer a plan that will actually lead you to the point that we're experiencing right now — that it actually happens, that you're in that position that you had planned for,” Close said.
“They earned every bit of it.”
Close said a theme that’s come up a lot over the course of the Bruins’ NCAA Tournament run is sacrifice. Players would share what they would do in games or in practice or for their teammates. And then they’d do it.
“Every player had to sacrifice,” Close said. “If any of our six seniors were on any other team, I believe they would have been an All-American, first team. To say that that is not as important to me than experiencing this together, wow, how lucky am I to be part of young women that would make that hard, right choice.”
It is a group of women that has taken on difficult moments together. Lauren Betts opened up about her struggles with depression and how low some of those lows really were, and her coaches and teammates wrapped themselves around her. Now, they share how happy they are that she gets to have the highest of highs as her true, authentic, joyous self.
“When I came in my sophomore year, I was completely different than I am today,” Betts said. “I showed up, and I had zero confidence. I wasn't sure if I wanted to really, like, play basketball for that much longer. Coach Cori really stayed patient with me. She wanted to see me accomplish everything that I'd ever dreamed of.
“They just continued to remind me that they want me to see myself the way they all see me. I feel like now, at this point, I can finally truly do that. I think that's what I'm most proud of.
It hasn't been an easy journey, but these people have truly embraced me for everything that I bring.”
It is a true team in every sense of the word. You could argue it’s even a bit of a throwback to an older era of college sports, too, considering the number of seniors who stuck together to make this run. The sum is greater than its parts, even though many of these parts are about to be drafted by WNBA teams.
These Bruins were the very best team in women’s college basketball this year. And they reached the mountaintop by knocking off South Carolina, the sport’s gold standard. Emphatically.
“I wondered how it would feel,” Close said. “I really did expect us to win today. I thought about it several times. I'm like, ‘We're going to win.’ I felt very peaceful all day.
“I wanted us to be able to play our best when our best was needed. We delivered on that.
It just is so much for me not about a national championship, but it's the validation that it can be done differently.”
It can — and it was. Just like they all envisioned it.