PHOENIX — Lauren Betts turned to the crowd, her hands on her head, and eyes met with the UCLA family section. She mouthed one phrase twice before she and her teammates rushed the floor.
“We did it.”
With a 30-point lead by the end of the third quarter, much of the end of Sunday’s NCAA championship victory was a celebration of what UCLA had built en route to its 79-51 victory over South Carolina.
By the final buzzer, it was a full-blown party.
UCLA’s Kiki Rice, right, drives around South Carolina’s Raven Johnson during the first half of the NCAA national title game on Sunday.
(Ronaldo Bolaños / Los Angeles Times)
“Just winning with this team, turning around and seeing my team run to the court after the final buzzer, there is a balance of being in the moment, but you can’t help in the last couple seconds, it hits,” UCLA point guard Charlisse Leger-Walker said. “We were going to be national champions.”
The Bruins’ first NCAA championship was a romp from start to finish, an inverse of their tournament experience a year ago. Last season, UCLA’s 34-point loss to Connecticut in the semifinal became the worst loss in tournament history.
“I just never wanted to feel that way ever again,” said senior center Lauren Betts, who was named the tournament’s most outstanding player. “I feel like ever since then we’ve really just grown in our preparation. I feel like everyone understood the moment. Never had to question that we weren’t going to go out there and be ready. You could tell on everyone’s faces how bad we wanted it. When duty called, everyone answered, so I’m just really proud of this group.”
UCLA won an AIAW title in 1978 against Maryland before women’s basketball was an NCAA sport.
UCLA’s Lauren Betts shoots over South Carolina’s Maryam Dauda in the first half of the NCAA national championship game Sunday.
(Ronaldo Bolaños / Los Angeles Times)
This season, there was no doubt UCLA was ready for the moment and it ensured it could reverse the history books.
“Today was just a fantastic display of our resilience, intensity that we came out with,” UCLA guard Kiki Rice said. “Just our will to win. We knew, we had a feeling this was our time, this was our year. We came out there this entire weekend, and we would not be denied.”
It was perhaps the most UCLA performance the Bruins could have had. In their final collegiate games, Betts (14 points, 11 rebounds) and Gabriela Jaquez (21 points, 10 rebounds) earned double-doubles and all five starters scored in double digits. They dominated the boards (49-36), played stellar defense and most important, didn’t turn the ball over often.
After the Bruins held Texas to a season-low 44 points in Friday’s semifinal, they held the Gamecocks to 51, also their lowest total all season.
UCLA’s Gabriela Jaquez celebrates after scoring while being fouled during the first quarter Sunday against South Carolina.
(Ronaldo Bolaños / Los Angeles Times)
“This is literally so incredible,” Rice said. “This is everything that we came here to do. And I’m so proud of every single person.”
The Bruins jumped out early while South Carolina struggled with the Bruins’ size and went three for 18 from the floor. Rice (10 points, six rebounds, five assists) hit a buzzer-beating three-pointer to end the opening quarter with the Bruins holding on to a 21-10 lead.
“I don’t know why, that moment, I was just like, ‘OK,’” said UCLA senior Angela Dugalic, who had nine points and five rebounds. “We had the rest of the game, but it just felt like, ‘We’re OK, we got this.’”
Near the end of the first, Betts came back to the bench coughing and sputtering, seemingly unable to clear her throat. At the start of the second quarter, she was at the end of the UCLA bench and used an inhaler before returning to the game.
UCLA’s suffocating defense held the Gamecocks to 25.7% shooting in the first half. Unlike Friday’s win over Texas, the Bruins’ offense recovered from a one-for-10 stretch far earlier, and UCLA led 36-23 at the half.
Highlights from UCLA’s win over South Carolina in the NCAA women’s basketball national championship game.
The Bruins outscored the Gamecocks 25-9 during the third quarter to earn a 61-32 lead off a 13-0 run. It was the largest lead ever for a team going into the fourth quarter of an NCAA championship game.
“It’s just so rare in life that you can start a journey with a group of people and really envision something, then trying to reverse engineer a plan that will actually lead you to the point that we’re experiencing right now, that it actually happens, that you’re in that position that you had planned for,” UCLA coach Cori Close said. “It’s just really with great humility. Man, we are so fortunate to be experiencing that. They earned every bit of it.”
South Carolina shot a season-worst 18 for 62 from the floor and two for 15 from three-point range.
Rice, Betts, Jaquez, Dugalic, Leger-Walker and Gianna Kneepkens have all exhausted their college eligibility and will go out on top as champions.
“There is no better way we could hope to end our career,” Rice said. “We played the last possible minutes of basketball that you could play in the season. We are the only team that’s ending their season with a win.”
UCLA players, including Kiki Rice, left, and Gabriela Jaquez celebrate after winning the NCAA women’s basketball national championship on Sunday.
(Ronaldo Bolaños/Los Angeles Times)
After the nets were cut down, Betts, Leger-Walker and Jaquez returned to the trophy stage and performed their signature viral dance they first performed during the UCLA men’s team’s senior night.
They laughed, they hugged and they cried, just as they did on the bench during the waning moments of their college careers after cementing their UCLA legacies.
“I think just the joy we have and the love we have for each other has really motivated us this whole season because we just want to do it for each other,” Jaquez said. “That just made it so special, and why we’ve been so successful this whole season.”
UCLA will need to rebuild with few returners, but now that her players have won a national title, Close should have her pick of the transfer portal.
Now, Close and the Bruins have championship pedigree.
“If any of our six seniors were on any other team, I believe they would have been an All-American, first team,” Close said. “To say that that is not as important to me than experiencing this together, wow, how lucky am I to be part of young women that would make that hard, right choice.”
UCLA players celebrate after defeating South Carolina for the NCAA women’s basketball championship.