{"id":319007,"date":"2026-05-16T16:49:14","date_gmt":"2026-05-16T16:49:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/319007\/"},"modified":"2026-05-16T16:49:14","modified_gmt":"2026-05-16T16:49:14","slug":"kiki-rice-makes-her-return-to-los-angeles-with-the-toronto-tempo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/319007\/","title":{"rendered":"Kiki Rice makes her return to Los Angeles with the Toronto Tempo"},"content":{"rendered":"

It wasn\u2019t too long ago that Kiki Rice<\/a> called Los Angeles<\/a> home. Rice spent four years with the UCLA Bruins<\/a>, capping off her run with an NCAA title last month to wrap up a record-setting season for the Bruins<\/a> program.<\/p>\n

On Friday, Rice returned to Los Angeles, this time as a member of the Toronto Tempo<\/a> to take on the Los Angeles Sparks<\/a>. The Tempo selected Rice with the No. 6 overall pick in this year\u2019s draft<\/a>, with the young guard.<\/p>\n

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Rice began her WNBA career with a 0-point performance but since then she\u2019s scored 12 points, and then 11 points in LA on Friday. Against the Sparks, Rice shot 4-7 from the field and hit a trio of three pointers. Before the game Friday, Rice spoke to the media<\/a> about her return to the West Coast.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just another game but it will be really cool to see friends, old teammates, some family coming out and to be able to play here,\u201d Rice said before taking the court at Crypto.com<\/a> Arena. \u201cThis is my first time playing here at Crypto, been to a lot of games over these past few years out here but to be able to step out on this court, and now finally be playing in the W, it\u2019s a really exciting thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rice should be one of the more WNBA-ready rookies, as she played on a UCLA team that had six players drafted to the league. The Bruins are coming off of a 37-1 season, which ended with head coach Cori Close getting a fresh contract extension<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been honestly really busy, these past few months have been crazy busy. It\u2019s been a lot of learning, a lot of new opportunities,\u201d Rice said. \u201cCori prepared all of us seniors who graduated to fit right in at the next level.\u201d<\/p>\n

This article originally appeared on UCLA Wire: NCAA champion Kiki Rice makes her WNBA return to Los Angeles<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It wasn\u2019t too long ago that Kiki Rice called Los Angeles home. Rice spent four years with the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":319008,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[42841,48,52,51,47,50,49,115424,131485,13652],"class_list":["post-319007","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-kiki-rice","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-los-angeles-sparks","tag-toronto-tempo","tag-ucla-bruins"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319007","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=319007"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319007\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/319008"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=319007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=319007"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=319007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}