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Alexander: UCLA women blend experience and exuberance

April 2, 2026

I am about to explain why UCLA’s women’s basketball team just might be the best show in town.

(And yes, I know. That’s a bold statement in a region where the Lakers and Dodgers have stolen our souls and held on for dear life, and where there are so many teams – two of each in several sports – that vie for our attention and entertainment dollars.)

But these Bruins, who will attempt to avenge their only loss of the regular season when they face Texas at 6:30 p.m. Friday in a national semifinal in Phoenix, have not only been dominant – a 35-1 record heading into their second straight Final Four – but have done so with joy, passion and togetherness, and that’s not an accident.

Head coach Cori Close has emphasized joy, and why not? Basketball is supposed to be fun, isn’t it?

And, as Gabriela Jaquez noted during an on-campus media availability Tuesday, that joy is shared by those who root them on, lots of whom will be making the trek to Phoenix this weekend.

“I think what we’ve done here is so special,” Jaquez said. “I mean, just creating such a fun community of people that come and show out at Pauley Pavilion, or whenever we play. We really appreciate it.

“And I think that’s what we’re really super proud of this year, besides obviously what we’ve done on the court, but creating a community where they just love each other, people meet each other. Like the little girls are writing us letters, giving us cookies, giving us notes … For these little kids to like see us as inspiration, I mean, there’s really nothing like it, and we’re super grateful for that.”

Any team that has any sort of following has created that type of community among its followers. The larger the profile or the greater the success, of course, the more pervasive the following. If you need convincing, just consider how much Dodgers or Lakers gear you see anywhere in Southern California these days.

But in this case, the bond seems particularly strong, and the success this program has enjoyed in recent years has helped create and strengthen that following.

UCLA has reached the program’s first back-to-back Final Fours since the NCAA began offering women’s basketball in 1982, while going 69-4. In Cori Close’s 15 years as head coach, UCLA is 356-144, a .712 winning percentage, and the program has reached the NCAA tournament 21 times overall and nine of the last 11 years. (It would have been 10 of 11 had there been a tournament in COVID-affected 2020, when the Bruins were 26-5.)

Before that, UCLA won the national championship in 1978 under the auspices of the Association of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women, breaking the stranglehold of women’s hoops powers Immaculata and Delta State in the first six seasons of that tournament. Naismith Basketball Hall of Famers Ann Meyers Drysdale, Denise Curry and the late Billie Moore, the coach, were all part of that UCLA championship, and all are in the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame.

Curry and Meyers Drysdale – whose name graces the women’s practice court in the Mo Ostin Basketball Center – remain close to the program. Curry told the Sacramento Bee during last weekend’s regional in the state capital: “I absolutely love this UCLA team for how they play, how they carry themselves, and for how they represent and honor UCLA.”

They are easy to like – unless, of course, you attended USC. Beyond their dominance, and particularly Lauren Betts’ player-of-the-year caliber performances as the 6-foot-7 fulcrum of this team, they are just darned fun to watch because of their style of play, the spirit with which they attack the game, and their selflessness – epitomized, as Close noted when we talked a month ago, by Angela Dugalic’s offer to come off the bench before the season began.

“I mean, think about that as a coach,” Close said then. “That never happens.”

To get to Sunday afternoon’s national championship game – likely against Connecticut, defending champ, undefeated and a lopsided winner over the Bruins in last year’s national semifinal – UCLA will have to avenge its 76-65 loss to Texas on Nov. 26 in Las Vegas. The Bruins have since won 29 in a row, and Close and players Jaquez and Charisse Leger-Walker – who was an injury redshirt last season after her 2024 transfer from Washington State – talked Tuesday about what they learned about dealing with the attention and expectations and distractions that come with Final Four weekend.

“I mean, we get off the plane (in Tampa last year) and there’s a pirate ship,” Jaquez said. “Don’t get me wrong, we really appreciated it.

“There’s so much hype … My family is hype, my friends are hype. Everyone is just so excited and you feel it. And then also, you’re in practice and around the whole court is cameras, media, all you guys are there. … You don’t understand until you’re there. But (we’re) super grateful for the experience and we’re going to be more prepared.”

Added Leger-Walker: “Just being in that environment and getting the chance to experience that is a lot for a team going in, and because we have that experience, I feel like we are more prepared.”

Maybe this is where that “1-0 mentality” comes in. Close is among those coaches who preach to their players that the only game to focus on is the one right in front of them, the objective obviously to finish the day 1-0. And, she said Tuesday, that has a particular impact in the earlier stages of tournament play, where you might be more inclined to look ahead at the bracket and who might be standing in the way assuming you win.

“I don’t have to remind them now that it’s a 1-0 season,” Close said. Nor should she, not when going 0-1 means going home.

And the Bruins certainly know if they get past Texas (35-3), they’ll see either UConn (38-0) or South Carolina (35-3). Neither is a bargain. Consider, too, that all four of these teams were in Tampa a year ago, so everybody should be inured to Final Four hype and distractions.

Best team in town? Why not, since UCLA is the only SoCal team playing for a championship at this moment.

“I don’t know if we are the best show in town right now,” Close said. “But I like that we get to share it with our great city and we get to be a part of building basketball and women’s basketball and youth sports and excitement in our city.

“I think there’s nothing in our world right now that brings diverse groups of people together in a unified fashion … Sports allows us to come together and to be all excited together and that is meaningful to me. That means a ton.”

And once the competition starts, she said, the idea is to maintain “the good balance of incredible intensity and incredible joy.”

Will that be the Bruins’ secret weapon?

jalexander@scng.com

Orange County Register

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Alexander: UCLA women blend experience and exuberance

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