The final buzzer felt like a formality.
Everyone in the Mortgage Matchup Center knew it was over, perhaps a quarter or more before. The UCLA Bruins, a team that was just the third in Big Ten history to go undefeated in conference play, somehow shocked the world. For a couple hours on Sunday, Cori Close’s team proved every critique of their team wrong and made just about everyone feel stupid for underestimating them all year long.
Lauren Betts, the superstar center who now looks towards her WNBA career, dominated South Carolina on both ends of the floor. Gabriela Jaquez was all over the floor, giving no quarter to a Gamecock team that appeared to be the hottest unit in the country heading into the NCAA Championship. Of course, the previous hottest unit in the country was Texas, who were similarly dominated by UCLA just a couple nights before.
We all should’ve seen this coming, and yet now that it’s happened there may be some people that still see it as a fluke.
It was anything but.
All five Bruins starters finished in double digits while holding South Carolina to 1/13 three point shooting and reducing an otherwise dominant SC offense to a shell of itself. UCLA was older, more experienced, battle-tested and prepared for a moment that was new to them in 2025. Their light personalities and innocent TikTok dancing hijinks obscured just how much of a killer instinct they had all year long. The only thing that stood between them and a perfect season was a non-conference loss to Texas that they repaid on Friday night at the Final Four.
A masterclass for Cori Close, who made good on the UCLA administration’s long-standing faith in her ability to take the program to a different level. After 15 years, a title is hers.
But what UCLA’s win represents is something far beyond Close, the school, or its proud basketball traditions. It’s a fitting epilogue for the old Pac-12. A love letter to west coast hoops and a call to action about how we cover the game moving forward. The conference is still alive, to be clear, but realignment has relegated the league into a shell of itself
Star center Lauren Betts, after all, started off at Stanford. Angela Dugalic transferred in from Oregon. Charlisse Leger-Walker and Gianna Kneepkens joined up after illustrious careers at Washington State and Utah, respectively. The two ‘homegrown’ products, Kiki Rice and Gabriela Jaquez, headlined the first truly elite recruiting class head coach Cori Close was able to secure.
It’s a pastiche that represents the talent that was always undeniably present in the Pac-12, even if national titles long eluded the programs themselves. But the disparate starting points underscore why it had to be UCLA, and Close, to be the ones to win a title in this new era. Around the west coast, she was sometimes referred to as ‘Kumbaya Cori’ in the Pac-12, a nod to her non-combative and collaborative nature. It could also be used derisively, as many questioned in the mid 2010’s if her teams had the requisite ‘dawg’ in them to win when the going got tough.
As the women’s basketball world changed after the pandemic and transfers as well as NIL became a common part of the game, Close didn’t alter her approach. Instead, she ended up becoming something of a Ted Lasso-type of figure, emphasizing the power of positive thinking and making her program a home for players to learn to love the game — and themselves — again.
“I’m having a lot of fun,” Lauren Betts told me in January of 2025. “Obviously you can tell. I think it just shows in the way I’m playing. I think you can see too, my face when I’m playing. I just really am surrounded by the best people every single day.”
When the center arrived in Westwood, she still carried the weight of expectations and the shadow of depression, which she courageously shared in The Player’s Tribune late last week. It was Cori Close, and Lauren’s mother Michelle, who encouraged her to address her teammates and coaches after she spent time at UCLA hospital for a particularly difficult depressive episode. That, as she wrote, was a release and charted a path forward. One that culminated with a storybook Sunday afternoon championship in Phoenix.
It’s a program rooted in support. Much like Dawn Staley has proven at South Carolina, Close and this Bruins team shows that you can pay players a good amount of money in NIL deals, bring in transfers and deal with attrition while still committing to the people first.
Maybe it was that ‘kumbaya’ nature that led almost everyone to write them off for most of the season. Maybe it was the blowout loss to UConn in the 2025 Final Four. Maybe it’s playing late at night in a city that has embarrassed itself for not embracing the Bruins in the same way they did, for instance, cross-town rival USC. Whatever it may be, we are now forced to confront a reality that college football fans had to this year: that the national champion was just this dominant all along and our disbelief was unwarranted.
How that changes our perception of UCLA women’s basketball is anyone’s guess. While we typically associate the school with hoop success, it’s been largely on the men’s end of things. Ann Meyers, Denise Curry and that incredible 1978 AIAW team did win a national title but Bruins WBB has only been to four Elite Eights since the NCAA took over governance of the women’s game in 1982.
Cori Close is responsible for three of those and both of UCLA’s NCAA Final Four runs have come in the last two seasons.
Not only has she overachieved, but if she were to retire tomorrow there is no doubt that she’s the best coach in the history of the program.
As confetti rained down in Phoenix, it was hard not to feel nostalgic for west coast basketball. While the old Pac-12 wasn’t a regularly dominant league in terms of national championships, they were often the deepest and possessed anywhere between one and three Final Four teams reliably. The 2010’s gave us Final Four runs from Washington, Oregon State, Oregon, Cal, Stanford and Arizona. UCLA and Arizona State both made Elite Eight trips of their own.
The talent was always there and this Bruins team shows us just how deep it all was. If USC winning the 2024 Pac-12 Tournament was the poetic symmetry to close out the final chapter of the league, then UCLA’s win is the epilogue the conference always deserved.
For Charlisse Leger-Walker, it’s the spotlight she always deserved but never received at Washington State.
For Gianna Kneepkens, it’s the finals run she could have had if not for two missed Jenna Johnson free throws in 2023.
For Angela Dugalic, it’s an affirmation of her value and importance to this program and its ascent.
For Kiki Rice, it’s a reward for being the highest recruit up to that point to trust Close and her vision.
For Gabriela Jaquez, it’s not just a win for a home town Camarillo kid but also a win for a rapidly expanding wave of influential Latina women’s basketball players.
And Lauren Betts, it’s a full circle moment. A number one overall recruit who went to Stanford on the heels of the Cardinal’s 2021 national title, now getting to write her own fairytale on her terms.
As these seniors head off into the sunset with a championship in hand, there’s another core already prepared to take up the mantle. Sienna Betts and Lena Bilic gave the world a little taste on Sunday, but get ready to learn their names now.
It truly marks the end of an era, where you could still see the residue of the Conference of Champions on college rosters. The Big Ten will claim their four west-coast castoffs as the new-look Pac-12 looks to create its own legacy. But this group of seniors, who came together at UCLA and made history in Westwood, are the final stewards of a proud women’s basketball legacy that was seeded on the west coast far before Title IX came into being.
The Bruins are NCAA national champions.
On the mountaintop, at last.