LOS ANGELES — UCLA led all the way, repelling Oklahoma State’s lone run in the third quarter, and the top-seeded Bruins won 87-68 Monday night to reach the Sweet 16 of March Madness for the fourth consecutive year.<\/p>\n
Lauren Betts had a career-high 35 points on 15-of-19 shooting and nine rebounds for the Bruins (33-1), who led by 25 points in the first half at Pauley Pavilion, where Dwyane Wade and wife Gabrielle Union watched with their 7-year-old daughter.<\/p>\n
Betts received a standing ovation when she left with a minute to go in the final home game of her career.<\/p>\n
Seeking a return trip to the Final Four, the Bruins advanced to play fourth-seeded Minnesota (24-10) in a matchup of Big Ten opponents Friday in Sacramento.<\/p>\n
UCLA’s 53-point victory over Cal Baptist in the opening round was the biggest postseason win in program history. The Bruins repeatedly blew out opponents in the regular season, too.<\/p>\n
Achol Akot scored 23 points for the Cowgirls before fouling out with 24 seconds remaining. Jadyn Wooten added 18 points and six assists.<\/p>\n
The Cowgirls made their only sustained run early in the third after trailing by 20 at halftime. Wooten scored six points in a 9-0 spurt that cut their deficit to 52-39.<\/p>\n
But Betts shut them down. She scored 10 of UCLA’s final 12 points of the period and the Bruins went into the fourth ahead 64-47. Betts had another 10 points in the fourth when UCLA fans were on their feet for the final seconds.<\/p>\n
Gianna Kneepkens added 15 points and Kiki Rice and Gabriela Jaquez had 10 apiece for the Bruins.<\/p>\n
The Bruins stunned the Cowgirls to start the game, scoring the first nine points and racing to a 21-6 lead after the first quarter, when the Cowgirls had six turnovers and missed 14 of 16 shots.<\/p>\n
UCLA opened the second on an 18-8 run, including nine in a row. When the Bruins missed short shots in the paint, Betts grabbed offensive rebounds and scored. The Cowgirls made 9 of 16 shots and trailed 46-26 at the break.<\/p>\n
Up next<\/p>\n
UCLA defeated Minnesota 76-58 in their lone regular-season matchup.<\/p>\n
Copyright \u00a9 2026 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LOS ANGELES — UCLA led all the way, repelling Oklahoma State’s lone run in the third quarter, and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":560581,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[276592,64,63,726,85],"class_list":["post-560580","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basketball","tag-276592","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-basketball","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/560580","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=560580"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/560580\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/560581"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=560580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=560580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=560580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}