{"id":252256,"date":"2026-04-05T00:28:13","date_gmt":"2026-04-05T00:28:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/252256\/"},"modified":"2026-04-05T00:28:13","modified_gmt":"2026-04-05T00:28:13","slug":"uclas-cori-close-is-ready-for-her-national-championship-moment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/252256\/","title":{"rendered":"UCLA’s Cori Close is ready for her national championship moment"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

PHOENIX\u00a0\u2014\u00a0If Dawn Staley and South Carolina beat UCLA<\/a> in the national title game Sunday, she would become the fourth coach to win four championships.<\/p>\n

UCLA coach Cori Close<\/a> is looking for her first. <\/p>\n

After 15 years of building the Bruins to a program that could get to the Final Four<\/a>, and a year later, the NCAA championship game<\/a>, the 52-year-old finds herself in the conversation with some of the game\u2019s legends.<\/p>\n

Staley is one of those who believes Close belongs.<\/p>\n

\u201cCori is a connector,\u201d Staley said Saturday. \u201cShe connects with her players, she connects with the community, she connects with powerful women that can help her as well as her players. She uses her voice. I think she\u2019s very in tune with the state of our game. Very in tune. She doesn\u2019t mind sharing. That\u2019s the key. You\u2019ve got to be able to share what you know in order for our game to grow. <\/p>\n

\u201cI do think she\u2019s a spokesperson for our game and she\u2019s one that really has used her voice for the advancement of our sport.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"South <\/p>\n

South Carolina coach Dawn Staley, left, believes UCLA coach Cori Close is a strong advocate for women\u2019s basketball.<\/p>\n

(Harry How \/ Getty Images; Sara Nevis \/ Associated Press)<\/p>\n

At a Final Four with Staley, 12-time national champion Geno Auriemma of Connecticut and Vic Shaefer of Texas, who has been to four Final Fours, Close often was excluded from the conversation about the star coaches. For years she\u2019s been labeled by critics as a better motivator than a tactical strategist you count in crunch time.<\/p>\n

But here she is with the best UCLA team ever in the NCAA title game for the first time, going head-to-head with Staley.<\/p>\n

After last year\u2019s \u201cembarrassment\u201d in the Final Four, Close took an opportunity to learn from the mistakes that led to a blowout loss to UConn.<\/a> <\/p>\n

\u201cTalking transparently, I did a crappy job as a leader,\u201d Close said. \u201cThe moment we touched down, I was in the transfer portal. Not a great situation. One of my biggest regrets of last spring is that I didn\u2019t celebrate them enough. I didn\u2019t find ways to go, \u2018This team was the most successful team since 1978-79.\u2019 I let myself get wrapped up in everything that was transpiring in the portal. I don\u2019t think I did a good enough job in that way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Going into Sunday\u2019s championship game, Close has a veteran group, with no starter younger than 22 and a leadership group of six players<\/a> slated to exhaust their eligibility and likely head to the WNBA.<\/p>\n

All those players except Gianna Kneepkens<\/a> were with the squad last season to see firsthand what went wrong. Charlisse Leger-Walker<\/a>, a transfer from Washington State, spent the year on the sideline recovering from an anterior cruciate ligament injury.<\/p>\n

Leger-Walker opened this season as the starting point guard and has seen a change in Close since last season\u2019s Final Four run. <\/p>\n

\u201cCori has built a lot of trust with this group, and it shows in the way that she stays so composed,\u201d Leger-Walker said. \u201cWe\u2019ve had a lot of conversations with her in the past that if she\u2019s anxious and very high emotionally, then that transfers into us, and she is constantly seeking our feedback. What can she do to be better for us? And that\u2019s something that you don\u2019t always get in head coaches. So I\u2019m really proud of her and her willingness to be open to us.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the locker room, players praised Close for opening up to the veteran group for input.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve seen her grow every single year, and I think that\u2019s just a testament to her work and to us as well, just being able to have that open communication between a coach and players,\u201d sixth-year forward Angela Dugalic<\/a> said. \u201cA lot of the time it\u2019s just like, whatever the coach says, that\u2019s what we do. Or sometimes players just do whatever they want. I think there\u2019s a good balance of Cori listening to us and us listening to Cori.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"UCLA <\/p>\n

UCLA coach Cori Close reacts during the Bruins\u2019 win over Minnesota in the Sweet 16.<\/p>\n

(Eric Thayer\/Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n

Senior Gabriela Jaquez<\/a>, who has played all four of her college seasons at UCLA, shared a similar perspective about how Close has learned to lean on her players.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe has improved every year and really listens to her players,\u201d Jaquez said, which makes Close \u201creally rare as a coach.\u201d<\/p>\n

Close said at the beginning of the tournament she had to apologize to a player because she \u201creally screwed up.\u201d She didn\u2019t specify what mistake she made but said her apology was a key step in continuing to build trust with this team.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s how you grow as a leader, how you earn credibility with your players, if you don\u2019t think you have it all together all the time,\u201d she said. \u201cI think when you\u2019re able to do that, you actually experience the most growth. So it\u2019s never fun in the moment. It sure wasn\u2019t fun to be exposed in some of the ways that we were exposed, and I\u2019m ultimately responsible. But I am thankful for the growth that has stemmed from that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Close had to build her best UCLA team and pull off her greatest coaching performance to get to this point. Now she faces off with Staley, perhaps the best coach of this era who just walloped Auriemma and the Huskies on the national stage.<\/p>\n

Once again, Close\u2019s work is cut out for her. This time, those around her feel she is ready to leap into the top coaches conversation.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have a responsibility to make strategic changes that reflect that I really heard those things or saw those things,\u201d she said. \u201cThere\u2019s tactical things. There\u2019s leadership things. There\u2019s how we structured our practices, things that we needed to address. So I just hope that every year, we do that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PHOENIX\u00a0\u2014\u00a0If Dawn Staley and South Carolina beat UCLA in the national title game Sunday, she would become the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":252257,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[56178,112032,28425,112034,107808,104290,112033,423,48,52,51,47,50,49,1741,112035,9442,278,1092,8843,72],"class_list":["post-252256","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-charlisse-leger-walker","tag-close-belong","tag-cori-close","tag-crunch-time","tag-dawn-staley","tag-final-four","tag-fourth-coach","tag-game","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-lot","tag-ncaa-championship-game","tag-player","tag-season","tag-ucla","tag-way","tag-year"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252256","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=252256"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252256\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/252257"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=252256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=252256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=252256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}