UCLA’s Rise to the Final Four: Cori Close’s Blueprint for a New Era

UCLA head coach Cori Close doesn’t want to claim her team is the first in school history to make the Final Four. 

“In 1978, AIAW, they won the national championship and went to the Final Four,” Close said at the press conference after the Bruins defeated LSU on Sunday. She was referring to the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women, which UCLA was in before joining the NCAA in 1984.

Regardless of the history, Close has still managed to lead the Bruins to a spot they haven’t reached in decades, at least on the women’s side. Her arrival 14 years ago kick-started the upward trajectory of the program—one that’s now two wins away from a national championship.

Close started her coaching career as an assistant at UCLA from 1993 to 1995. She took assistant roles at a couple of other schools before getting her first head coaching gig with the Bruins in 2011. She said Sunday that she texted former UCLA AD Dan Guerrero to thank him for taking “a risk” on her despite the lack of experience, and it paid off as the Bruins are 287–140 (.672) under Close and have not had a losing season in more than a decade.

A Different Group

Close has had some competitive rosters in the past, notably four years with Jordin Canada, who was eventually selected No. 5 in the 2018 WNBA draft. But this year’s team was different. Aside from its Final Four berth, this is also their first time with a No. 1 seed in the tournament. And many of the team’s core returned from last year, when it secured a No. 2 seed, which, at the time, was its highest ever.

Lauren Betts is the catalyst at the center, but the No. 1 player in ESPN’s 2022 high school recruiting class chose Stanford. Betts struggled with the Cardinal under Tara VanDerveer. She entered the transfer portal after her freshman year—and despite her parents reportedly planning visits to programs with historical success like Notre Dame and UConn—she chose UCLA. She wanted to be “protected,” according to SI, and Close and the Bruins helped her, even finding her a therapist to find her love again.

By securing Betts, the Bruins suddenly had the top two players of the 2022 recruiting class. The No. 2 recruit was Kiki Rice, who had offers from UConn, Stanford, Duke, and Arizona. Rice said Wednesday on Shannon Sharpe’s Nightcap podcast that one of the main reasons she chose UCLA was to bring success to a school that had yet to win a national title.

“I didn’t want to go to a program that had a bunch of national championships and been to the Final Four a bunch of times,” Rice said. “I felt like it makes it even more special to go to a place and help it become that level of program.”

UCLA also secured the No. 19 recruit of 2022, Gabriela Jaquez, an Irvine, Calif., native whose brother, Jaime Jaquez Jr., played four years for the Bruins before getting drafted to the NBA. The Bruins have also secured the commitment from the No. 2 recruit in the 2025 high school class, which just so happens to be forward Sienna Betts, Lauren’s sister.

“From the very beginning, it was obvious that we had enough talent, but we said talent was gonna be our floor,” Close said Sunday.