PHOENIX — Bliss is Cori Close cleaning tears off her glasses. It’s Lauren Betts and Kiki Rice bouncing on their toes and buzzing with energy, breaking free from the sideline to run onto the court. It’s Gabriela Jaquez, gasping for air, overcome with the emotion of reaching her ultimate dream. It’s Gianna Kneepkens leaving Utah to win a national title, and actually doing it. It’s Angela Dugalic sacrificing a starting spot for something bigger.
It’s seniors recording every single point in the Final Four.
It’s blue and gold confetti.
Bliss is UCLA winning its first national title since 1978.
“Our mentality coming out, we all just decided,” Jaquez said after a 79-51 win over South Carolina. “I think that’s what made us so powerful this whole season. When we decided we wanted to do something, we did it.”
Decisions hold great force. Small ones, big ones, they all led to this moment.
Starting with Rice’s decision. She could have gone anywhere. Rice was the No. 2 player in the class of 2022, a brainiac floor general who attacked the rim with equal parts intensity and poise. She played her high school basketball in Maryland and was recruited by every elite school on the East Coast, from UConn and Maryland to Duke and North Carolina.
On the other side of the country was UCLA, an up-and-coming program that was four years removed from its only Elite Eight in the 21st century. That run could easily have been a blip, a high point in Cori Close’s coaching tenure. But there was something about UCLA that intrigued Rice. As she continued to narrow her list, UCLA made cut after cut.
Assistant coach Tony Newnan, who led Rice’s recruitment, was never quite sure where his team stood. Rice was reserved, keeping her thoughts and feelings close to the chest. And perhaps part of him wondered why such a talent from the opposite side of the country would choose an unproven program.
“Her dad actually told me to keep pursuing her,” Newnan told Hoops HQ during the 2024-25 season.
Thank goodness he did.
“So many people came here wanting to play with her,” Close said.
Rice was the building block, the proof that it was OK for big names to commit to UCLA. And they kept coming. Jaquez and Dugalic were already on the roster. Betts committed out of the transfer portal the following season and was later joined by Charlisse Leger-Walker and Kneepkens. It took four years to build. UCLA went to the Sweet Sixteen in 2023 and again in 2024. Last season the Bruins played in the Final Four, getting destroyed by UConn. But on Sunday, they were the dominant team.
The UCLA Bruins are national champions. Finally.
For Jaquez and Rice it was four years in the making. For Betts, three. For Close, it was a goal that she dreamed up when she was an assistant coach at UCLA in 1993. One that Bruins legend John Wooden helped her foster, serving as her mentor until his death in 2010 – one year before she was named head coach at UCLA.
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The spirit of Wooden is alive and well with Close. Her phrases are easily made into inspirational quotes. Her love for the game is palpable. And her commitment to not just winning, but winning the right way comes straight from the lessons he taught her when she was just 22.
“I remember he passed away the year before I got this job. I remember thinking to myself, ‘Oh my gosh, I don’t want to let him down,’” she said. “The biggest way I can pay it forward is to live in a way and coach in a way and teach in a way that pays forward what he did for me.”
That approach is what helped her land Betts out of the portal in 2023. The former No. 1 recruit was shaken by her first season at Stanford. She’d lost confidence and her love for the game. What followed was a long journey of mental health work, self-acceptance and, finally, dominance on the court and happiness off of it. Close was with her every step of the way.
“Coach Cori really stayed patient with me,” Betts said. “She wanted to see me accomplish everything that I’d ever dreamed of.”
On Sunday, Betts lived out several of those dreams. She played her last game of college basketball with her little sister, Sienna. She won a national title and was named Most Outstanding Player after recording 14 points, 11 rebounds, 2 assists and 2 blocks in the championship game.
As Betts accepted the award, her mom, Michelle, watched through the lens of her iPhone, squinting as her eyes welled with tears. Sienna cried too, and so did Close. They know what it took to get here.
Jaquez and Rice had their own journey. They spent all four of their college seasons at UCLA and remember countless meetings during their freshman year in which they discussed someday winning a title.
“We were determined, the core group, to do something UCLA hadn’t done before in the NCAA era,” Jaquez said. “That was important for us. We always believed. We always believed.”
That belief was a decision. Just like it was a decision to embrace each other. To do less as individuals and more as a team. To win the national title.
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