UCLA Women’s Basketball Strives for a Final Four Return

When UCLA’s women’s basketball team took the floor in the Big Ten championship against Iowa, the starting five didn’t include any underclassmen. Seniors Lauren Betts, Kiki Rice, and Gabriela Jaquez, along with graduate students Charlisse Leger-Walker and Gianna Kneepkens, led the program to a Big Ten conference tournament championship. They destroyed the Hawkeyes in a jaw-dropping 96–45 win, during which all five starters scored in double digits.

It’s not a new trend that women’s college basketball programs have historically skewed older. The WNBA requires domestic players to be 22 years old and to have completed their graduation or be four years removed from high school graduation to be eligible for the WNBA draft.

But UCLA women’s basketball coach Cori Close, in her 15th year with the Bruins, has had to adjust her recruiting strategy in recent years. The new era of NIL, revenue-sharing, and the transfer portal has led to many schools emphasizing recruiting more older players through the transfer portal than younger players out of high school. 

“I have a responsibility to keep our program at a championship level, and I don’t think I can do it with just freshmen anymore,” Close told Yahoo Sports earlier this season.

Now, UCLA is a Big Ten champion and projected one-seed, with a chance to capture an NCAA championship.

All five starters have the experience that comes with age, but many of them have the recent, shared experience of coming up short, too. Rice, Betts, and Jaquez were all part of the UCLA squad that made it to the Final Four last year (Leger-Walker was a Bruin but did not play last season). They lost to the UConn Huskies in the semifinal round—an 85–51 blowout Close hopes the returning players learn from.

“I’d never been No. 1 in the country for 14 straight weeks,” Close told The Orange County Register in February. “We’d never been to the Final Four. … I think that all of us, from our players to me as the head coach, are better equipped and have a little more of a proactive strategic mindset this year.”