{"id":238543,"date":"2026-03-27T02:50:13","date_gmt":"2026-03-27T02:50:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/238543\/"},"modified":"2026-03-27T02:50:13","modified_gmt":"2026-03-27T02:50:13","slug":"close-ucla-players-meet-media-before-sweet-16-in-sacramento","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/238543\/","title":{"rendered":"Close, UCLA players meet media before Sweet 16 in Sacramento"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>UCLA head coach Cori Close and players <a href=\"https:\/\/www.on3.com\/rivals\/angela-dugalic-168699\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Angela Dugali\u0107<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.on3.com\/rivals\/gabriela-jaquez-162988\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Gabriela Jaquez<\/a> met with reporters Thursday in Sacramento ahead of the top-seeded Bruins\u2019 regional semifinal against fourth-seeded Minnesota.<\/p>\n<p>The game Friday will air at 4:30 p.m. on ESPN from the Golden 1 Center.<\/p>\n<p>Take advantage of Bruin Report Online\u2019s EPIC $1 for 5 months deal!!!\u00a0Join the No. 1 independent source on UCLA sports and recruiting with our introductory offer!! Get unmatched insider Bruin coverage as BRO moves over to the industry-leading On3 network for just $1 for 5 months!! There is no promo code required for this offer, just\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.on3.com\/sites\/bruin-blitz\/join\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">HIT THIS LINK<\/a>\u00a0now, and you\u2019ll be good to go!!<\/p>\n<p>Close said looking back on the lone meeting between the Big Ten foes, an 18-point road win over the Golden Gophers in mid-January, is only one piece of the scouting puzzle.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey present a lot of problems,\u201d Close said. \u201cThey force you to be really fundamentally sound defensively.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere\u2019s a sense of how did they attack us in that last matchup, and then what tendencies have they shown since then.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It will be UCLA\u2019s fourth consecutive Sweet 16 appearance. Dugali\u0107, who transferred from Oregon in 2021, credited \u201ca lot of the success\u201d to the arrival of Jaquez and guard <a href=\"https:\/\/www.on3.com\/rivals\/kiki-rice-162864\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Kiki Rice<\/a>, who have been with the program for four years.<\/p>\n<p>Jaquez said the international experience on the roster, which includes a pair of Olympics appearances for Dugali\u0107, has helped with understanding and accepting various roles on a deep, experienced UCLA team.<\/p>\n<p>UCLA press conference in Sacramento before Sweet 16<\/p>\n<p>Watch the full video below courtesy of the NCAA:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"UCLA head coach Cori Close and players Angela Dugali\u0107 and Gabriela Jaquez met with reporters Thursday in Sacramento&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":238544,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[10157,121,123,122],"class_list":["post-238543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sacramento","tag-regwall","tag-sacramento","tag-sacramento-headlines","tag-sacramento-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=238543"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238543\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/238544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=238543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=238543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=238543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}