UCLA women’s basketball hopes new Final Four approach leads to title

Cori Close and her team will be dining in once they reach Phoenix.

One year after a much shorter stay than she would have liked in the Final Four, the UCLA women’s basketball coach is not going to make the same mistake of taking the Bruins to a restaurant.

Even though the team enjoyed its own private space, it found itself swarmed by people wanting pictures and autographs. It was the sort of distraction that the team wants to avoid this week as it chases its first NCAA championship.

“It’s not any any one thing, it’s small,” Close said Tuesday afternoon, “but it’s the cumulative effect of all the things that can just take your focus a little bit off your edge and I think if there’s one thing that we’re trying to do it’s trying to get us to our edge so that we are ready to go into the battle that’s in front of us.”

Close and her players say they’re better prepared for the fight ahead against Texas on Friday at the Mortgage Matchup Center based on what they learned last year on college basketball’s biggest stage.

The Bruins got stomped by 34 points in a national semifinal by UConn, leading to multiple debriefings about what went wrong.

Some of it was on the court, some of it was off.

“There was a lot of dissecting what just happened here, what did we learn?” Close said. “What did it teach us? How will we do things differently? That process started nine months ago in terms of being prepared for this moment. So it definitely feels different. But I watched the game several times, it’s very painful but it definitely informed how we attacked the year.”

Using that discomfort as motivation, UCLA center Lauren Betts rewatched the game 10 times, the outcome never failing to disappoint.

“Because I was mad,” Betts said last weekend when asked why she would want to re-live that agony. “And I just didn’t understand how that could happen. But, I mean, I think for me it just riles me up. It’s nothing, like, not getting mad at any individual. It was a team loss. I think, for me, it was just, how can I be better going into next year, and how can I push this team so we can get there again and have that opportunity.”

Betts is among four starters – including guard Angela Dugalic, who moved to the bench this season – who earned a shot at redemption after winning a school-record 29 consecutive games to reach this point.

In case the team needed a reminder of what a big deal this is, UCLA Chancellor Julio Frenk and his wife, Felicia Knaul, appeared at the practice facility Tuesday afternoon to wish the team good luck before it departed for the airport.

As much as they appreciate the fanfare, the Bruins say they intend not to get caught up in it after experiencing it for the first time a year ago in Tampa, Fla. Back then, the team disembarked from its plane to see a pirate ship as part of the festivities.

“There’s so much hype,” UCLA guard Gabriela Jaquez said. “Like, you feel it from not only like my family is hyped, my friends are hyped, everyone is just so excited and you know you feel it.

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“And then also like you’re in practice and around the whole court it’s cameras, media, all you guys are there, and it’s just like something that you don’t understand until you’re there. But super grateful for the experience, and we’re gonna be more prepared.”

The Bruins hope that do-over effect also applies to a rematch with their opponent.

Fellow top seed Texas toppled UCLA, 76-65, when the teams met in late November in Las Vegas, handing the Bruins their only loss of the season. Flustering UCLA with early pressure, the Longhorns bolted to a 20-point halftime lead before holding off a late comeback.

What needs to go better this time?

“Well, it would help if we didn’t turn the ball over 20 times and we rebound,” Close said, referring to what went wrong in the first matchup. “More than anything else, it’s our mentality. It’s the mentality that we have an aggression level about us, just a mindset issue, I’ll leave it at that. There’s a tremendous amount that that loss taught us and it doesn’t do any good to talk about what it taught us; let’s show what it taught us.”

Point guard Charlisse Leger-Walker said UCLA’s male scout team has prepared the Bruins for the sort of defensive intensity they will face against the Longhorns.

“They’re just so good, and I think they try and replicate that every day in practice,” Leger-Walker said. “And obviously, Texas is known for their defense and their pressure, and that’s something that collectively, we as a team have to have a mindset of taking care of the ball, and everybody has to know their role in that.”

Knowing their role. Avoiding distractions. Coming out more assertive.

It might just be a blueprint for a championship.