I didn\u2019t buy it, but I admired their aspirational attitude like I admired someone who dreamed of visiting the moon.<\/p>\n
At the time, the Gamecocks were two-time national champions. Now, of course, coach Dawn Staley<\/a>\u2019s teams have won three NCAA titles \u2014 with a shot at four, if she can get her team past Rice, Close and their Bruins in the NCAA women\u2019s basketball championship game on Sunday.<\/p>\n UCLA and South Carolina, the last teams standing in the 2025-26 season.<\/p>\n The best teams in the country.<\/p>\n And besides that, with their hard-fought Final Four victories Friday over Texas<\/a> and Connecticut<\/a>, respectively, barometers for other programs that dream of ascending to such elite heights.<\/p>\n And wouldn\u2019t you know it? It\u2019s exactly as Close predicted in November 2022, when her Bruins were off to a 7-0 start with a nationally televised date against the Gamecocks up next.<\/p>\n \u201cBoth programs obviously hold themselves to very high standards,\u201d Close said then. \u201cThey are a little bit ahead of us, in the fact that they\u2019ve won two national championships. But that\u2019s where we want to be. We want to be that level of a program.\u201d<\/p>\n At the time, Close sounded like the precocious kid at the party who goes around telling the adults that she\u2019s going to be president someday \u2014 or in Rice\u2019s case, that her team would be one of the top in the nation.<\/p>\n UCLA players celebrate after defeating Texas in the Final Four on Friday to advance to the NCAA women\u2019s basketball national championship game.<\/p>\n (Ronaldo Bolanos\/Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n \u201cWe know we have the talent, the skill and we have the ability to execute and play at the level of a top-five team,\u201d said the point guard who had just arrived in Westwood as the nation\u2019s No. 2 recruit, behind Lauren Betts \u2014 who\u2019d join her a season later.<\/p>\n You know how we adults are inclined to respond to such unbridled optimism: With patronizing pats on the head. By lying encouragingly, \u201cSure, pal, you can do anything you want to!\u201d<\/p>\n How cute. <\/p>\n Oh, but the Bruins were being serious.<\/p>\n They meant it.<\/p>\n Hold the follow-through: They did it.<\/p>\n They talked their talk right into existence, respectfully, reverently.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is what we all came here to do,\u201d said Gabriela Jaquez<\/a> on Friday, a few minutes after the Bruins eked out an oppressive 51-44 victory over Texas to march into the NCAA championship game for the first time in program history.<\/p>\n Rice and Jaquez were the only members of the current Bruins juggernaut who began their college careers as a freshman at UCLA in 2022, when they \u2014 then as the nation\u2019s No. 15 team \u2014 played the top-ranked Gamecocks respectably in Columbia, losing 74-64.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s kind of full circle playing South Carolina in the national championship game,\u201d said Jaquez, who remembers that first meeting having to deal with Gamecocks star Aliyah Boston in front of a packed Colonial Life Arena.<\/p>\n \u201cYeah, crazy. And we played \u2018em again right in the Sweet 16.\u201d<\/p>\n That season ended with another loss to South Carolina<\/a>, 59-43, in the Sweet 16.<\/p>\n The following season, the Bruins lost again in the Sweet 16<\/a>, this time in a 78-69 nailbiter against Louisiana State.<\/p>\n And then, by the time UCLA and South Carolina completed their home-and-home set in 2024, UCLA was really starting to fulfill the prophecy it had laid out for itself.<\/p>\n The Bruins dismantled South Carolina<\/a> 77-62 in a November game at Pauley Pavilion, launching themselves on a path toward the program\u2019s first NCAA Final Four appearance last March, when their season ended with an 85-51 national semifinal loss to UConn<\/a>.<\/p>\n![\"UCLA](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/1775304969_477_.jpeg\")
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