PHOENIX (KABC) — UCLA will face South Carolina in the women’s NCAA Tournament national championship game after Lauren Betts led the way in the Bruins’ semifinal win over Texas Friday night in Phoenix.<\/p>\n
Betts recorded a double-double, scoring 16 points and grabbing 11 rebounds in UCLA’s 51-44 Final Four victory over the Longhorns.<\/p>\n
UCLA fended off a late surge by Texas in the fourth quarter.<\/p>\n
The Longhorns are one of the nation’s best defensive teams and flexed their D during a 12-2 run that cut UCLA’s lead to 47-44. However, Betts came up with a big block on fellow All-American Madison Booker with 20 seconds left to stop the Longhorns’ momentum.<\/p>\n
“When that play happened, I really have so much confidence that every time she is in a matchup, she’s going to find a way to alter, block, scare somebody from doing that,” UCLA coach Cori Close said. “I just think she’s spectacular.”<\/p>\n
UCLA’s Kiki Rice added 11 points and 5 rebounds, while Gabriela Jacquez and Gianna Kneepkens each scored 10 points and grabbed 4 rebounds.<\/p>\n
It is the first time the UCLA women have reached the NCAA national championship game.<\/p>\n
UCLA will now prepare for a Sunday showdown against South Carolina, the three-time national champions who ended reigning champion UConn’s undefeated season and left Huskies’ coach Geno Auriemma fuming.<\/p>\n
Sunday’s national championship game between UCLA and South Carolina will air on ABC7 at 12:30 p.m. <\/p>\n
The Associated Press contributed to this report.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Copyright \u00a9 2026 KABC Television, LLC. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PHOENIX (KABC) — UCLA will face South Carolina in the women’s NCAA Tournament national championship game after Lauren…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":234739,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[90645,27,29,28],"class_list":["post-234738","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-90645","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=234738"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234738\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/234739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=234738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=234738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=234738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}