Cori Close has closed it out.<\/p>\n
The No. 1-seeded UCLA Bruins<\/a> routed fellow top seed South Carolina 79-51 in the women’s NCAA Tournament national championship game<\/a> Sunday, an important result for several reasons.<\/p>\n UCLA has now won its first ever women’s basketball championship. It’s also the school’s first NCAA<\/a> title since the men’s team won in 1995. The Bruins did so by going 37-1<\/a>, losing only to the Texas Longhorns<\/a> on Nov. 26 by nine points.<\/p>\n Leading the charge on the sidelines was head coach Close, who has put her name in the history books alongside a team pioneered by Lauren Betts, Gabriela Jaquez, Kiki Rice and Giannia Kneepkens.<\/p>\n Here’s what to know about Close following the Bruins’ memorable victory:<\/p>\n Who is Cori Close?<\/p>\n Close is the head coach of UCLA women’s basketball.<\/p>\n How old is Cori Close?<\/p>\n Close is 54 years old. She was born on July 29, 1971.<\/p>\n Where is Cori Close from?<\/p>\n Close is from Milpitas, Calif., a city in the Bay Area.<\/p>\n Did Cori Close play in college or professionally?<\/p>\n Close played for UC Santa Barbara as a guard from 1989 to 1993.<\/p>\n When did Cori Close join UCLA?<\/p>\n Close’s first stint with UCLA was from 1993-95 as an assistant. She then moved back to Santa Barbara from 1995 to 2004 as an assistant\/associate coach before joining Florida State from 2004 to 2011 in a similar assistant role.<\/p>\n UCLA hired her to be the head coach in 2011, where she’s been since.<\/p>\n What is Cori Close’s head-coaching record?<\/p>\n Close has a 358-144 record as UCLA’s head coach, good for a 71.3% winning percentage.<\/p>\n What accolades does Cori Close have?<\/p>\n Close helped the Bruins win the WNIT in 2015 as her first title. She won the Big Ten tournament in 2025 and 2026 before winning the NCAA championship in 2026, too. <\/p>\n Individually, she won the USBWA Coach of the Year and Naismith Women\u2019s College Coach of the Year in 2025 before claiming the Big Ten Coach of the Year in 2026.<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tUCLA guard Gabriela Jaquez, fresh off helping the Bruins win the Big Ten tournament title, is embracing her final March Madness run with a tight-knit team and family inspiration from her brother Miami Heat forward Jaime Jaquez Jr.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cori Close has closed it out. The No. 1-seeded UCLA Bruins routed fellow top seed South Carolina 79-51…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":253381,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[48,52,51,47,50,49,20730,9591,23857,15435],"class_list":{"0":"post-253380","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-la","9":"tag-la-headlines","10":"tag-la-news","11":"tag-los-angeles","12":"tag-los-angeles-headlines","13":"tag-los-angeles-news","14":"tag-march-madness","15":"tag-ncaa","16":"tag-ncaa-basketball","17":"tag-ncaa-tournament"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253380","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=253380"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253380\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/253381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=253380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=253380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=253380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}