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PHOENIX — Of Cori Close’s many corny, yet vital, motivational phrases, one stood out amid a series of confetti drops and trophy lifts.
We stand on the shoulders of people who came before us.
That’s legendary 10-time NCAA men’s championship coach John Wooden, whom Close met with and tapped into on many occasions in the 1990s. She sees the banners every time she goes out to practices at Pauley Pavilion.
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That included the 1978 AIAW women’s champion team, which is often lost to history since the NCAA took over governance of women’s sports in 1982. Close is constantly texting with Ann Meyers Drysdale, Denise Curry and Debbie Willie Haliday. Many of those champions are season-ticket holders.
And beginning now, it includes Close and her 2026 UCLA women’s roster. The Bruins broke through for their first championship in the NCAA era on Sunday in a 79-51 destruction of South Carolina at Mortgage Matchup Arena in Phoenix.
It’s the second title all-time in Big Ten history, joining the 1999 Purdue squad, and only the second first-time winner on the women’s side in the last eight NCAA tournaments. Close, the WBCA coach of the year, became the longest-tenured coach at one school before winning the ’chip.
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“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. It wasn’t about whether or not we got the W or not. I wanted us to be able to play our best when our best was needed. We delivered on that.”
There was no margin for error. This wasn’t about history; it was the shrinking of opportunity and time. The Bruins’ top six are all seniors. Four transferred in over the last four years, including hole-fillers Gianna Kneepkens and Angela Dugalić. With a jump to the pros on the horizon, it already felt like a professional roster understanding its core was going to break apart in due time.
They didn’t fold to the pressure of it, besting the doubters after a blowout loss to Connecticut in the program’s first Final Four 366 days ago in Tampa, Florida.
No such flop happened in their first NCAA title game. The Bruins left nothing to doubt in a quick 13-4 lead that never lost air en route to a 35-point snoozer. The seniors scored every one of their 79 points in a center-court graduation party for the ages.
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“We knew, we had a feeling this was our time, this was our year,” guard Kiki Rice said. “We came out there this entire weekend, and we would not be denied.”
PHOENIX, ARIZONA – APRIL 5: Head coach Cori Close of the UCLA Bruins swings around the net after defeating the South Carolina Gamecocks in the NCAA Women’s Basketball Championship game at Mortgage Matchup Center on April 5, 2026 in Phoenix, Arizona. (Photo by Ben Solomon/NCAA Photos via Getty Images)
(Ben Solomon via Getty Images)
They became the eighth team in the last 30 years to win in their national title game debut by riding the rare talent Close loved on and developed in Lauren Betts.
“The confidence we came out with, we just knew we were going to win because of all the prep and work that we put in,” Betts said. “I think when we find a way to play together and play selflessly, do what we do, no one can stop us. You guys saw that.”
Asked about the difficulty of executing against Betts, Texas All-American Madison Booker and South Carolina All-American Raven Johnson were blunt.
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“She’s 6-7,” each said after losses in the Final Four.
The reality is you can’t teach that. You can instruct skills and develop them, but height is a major determining factor. The multi-tool Betts is the cheat code few can counter, a two-way fulcrum that Cori Close built off of for her three UCLA seasons.
Betts’ wingspan reaches the length of the paint, allowing for stretched-out rebounds over the trio of 6-foot South Carolina guards. And her presence in the paint is a dare few from South Carolina chose or won. They were plus-12 on the boards; Betts finished with a team-high 11 of them and a significant number of tip-outs for her teammates to rack them up.
South Carolina couldn’t reach in and force as many turnovers or jump balls as the suffocating defense could do to UConn. UCLA is adept at lobbing into Betts in the post where no one else can even sniff a wisp of leather, and it’s an easy two. She can hover out of the play, wait for the offensive rebound and ensuing pass no one can catch, and feed the open perimeter player.
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That’s a rare combination of physical gifts, talent, skill and a program that brought in offensive help around her. Close continually built through the transfer portal in targeted pieces to craft a winner around Kiki Rice, the No. 2 overall recruit in the 2022 class, and Gabriela Jaquez, a local product whose older brother played at UCLA. (Yes, Jaquez said, she absolutely holds bragging rights.)
After losing last year, Close brought in Kneepkens and Charlisse Leger-Walker to stretch the floor.
“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.
Lauren Betts (left) was named Most Outstanding Player on Sunday after UCLA’s win. (Photo by Ben Solomon/NCAA Photos via Getty Images)
(Ben Solomon via Getty Images)
The starters each reached double digits, led by Jaquez’s 21, and shot a combined 43.5% from the floor with an 8 of 19 mark from 3. There were too many playmakers for even a Staley-run South Carolina defense to cover.
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Madina Okot, South Carolina’s tallest and most experienced counter, measured up tiny in comparison, despite her 6-6 listing. Alicia Tournebize, the freshman midseason international signee, wasn’t experienced enough. It didn’t help that the Gamecocks played slow, a mishmash of confusion on defense and a straight mess on offense. Their shots weren’t falling, even at the rim, and it spiraled out of control.
“I felt like we were ready,” Tessa Johnson, who led South Carolina with 14 points, said. “We knew we wanted it. But I guess we didn’t show it out there as much as we thought we wanted it.”
There was a potential hangover from upsetting undefeated UConn, a tall task made more emotional against a heavily favored rival on a 54-game winning streak.
The Huskies have been in that situation before. It is more probable to lose back-to-back championship games than to win them. The Gamecocks are now the seventh to do so, failing to join legendary programs Tennessee and UConn by winning a third title in a five-year span.
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“Sometimes you’re part of women’s basketball history,” South Carolina head coach Dawn Staley said. “It’s not favorable to you. You could see if you’re going to lose to a team, like UCLA, you want to lose to a team that just really out-works you, out-executed you [and] made it very difficult for you to perform at a high level.”
Staley and Close were highly complimentary of each other in the lead-up to their title game tilt, a stark contrast to the rivalry tension between Staley and UConn’s Geno Auriemma on Friday night. It took 17 years as a head coach, and nine at South Carolina, for Staley to win a championship. They broke through for their first in 2017. LSU is the only other first-time winner in that span, in 2023, also doing it with a transfer-heavy class that introduced a new era of how to win in collegiate athletics.
Close is no stranger to what this championship has cost. She needs to replace everyone when the portal opens on Monday morning.
“I did say to my mom, ‘the transfer portal just got easier,’” Close said, smiling in a championship T-shirt and hat. Her goggled players already exited for photos and their final moments as active UCLA players.
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They will hold the distinction of being the first, while also not. In reaching back-to-back Final Fours, and winning it all, they turned a larger spotlight onto that 1978 group and UCLA’s dormant overall success. Meyers Drysdale, honored at the first quarter break as a former Olympic champion, lifted her red Team USA polo to reveal a UCLA T-shirt. The Bruins-heavy home crowd couldn’t get enough of it.
It’s why, when it was mentioned this weekend that UCLA was in its first title game, Close consistently interrupted with a correction.
“Every time we get said as the first and the only, and we don’t say anything to correct that, it’s sort of like this jab at that team,” Close said on Saturday. “So it’s an opportunity for us to bring that light to them and to say we see you, we see you, we appreciate you.”
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She never wants to diminish what they did. Or what Wooden built and passed on. She now understands what it takes to do it.
