Lauren Betts had 16 points and made a huge block late, and UCLA withstood a late charge by Texas on Friday night for a 51-44 win to reach the women’s NCAA Tournament national championship game for the first time.<\/p>\n
Manhandled by eventual national champion UConn in their first Final Four a year ago, the Bruins (36-1) dominated their way to another national semifinal with the best season in program history.<\/p>\n
A chance at a first national championship game appearance had to go through the only team\u00a0to beat them this season<\/a>.<\/p>\n Overpowered in the first meeting, the Bruins turned the bully tables on Texas (35-4), shutting down All-American Madison Booker while building a 13-point lead midway through 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.<\/p>\n Betts swatted the Texas run to halt.<\/p>\n She blocked Booker’s shot with 20 seconds left and Kiki Rice hit two free throws, sending coach Cori Close’s crew into the title game.<\/p>\n The grinding win earns the Bruins a spot Sunday\u2019s title game against South Carolina, the three-time national champions who\u00a0ended reigning champion UConn\u2019s undefeated season<\/a>\u00a0and left Huskies\u2019 coach\u00a0Geno Auriemma fuming<\/a>.<\/p>\n So was Booker after a brutal finish to what was otherwise a stellar season. She hit her first shot, missed her next 17 and finished with six points on 3-of-23 shooting.<\/p>\n ___<\/p>\n AP March Madness bracket:\u00a0https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/ncaa-womens-bracket<\/a>\u00a0and coverage:\u00a0https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/march-madness<\/a><\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tMillions fill out NCAA Tournament brackets every year, but a perfect one has never been verified. Here\u2019s why predicting all 63 games of March Madness is nearly impossible.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lauren Betts had 16 points and made a huge block late, and UCLA withstood a late charge by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":234979,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[48876,29183,27,29,28],"class_list":{"0":"post-234978","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-texas","8":"tag-march-madness","9":"tag-ncaa-basketball","10":"tag-texas","11":"tag-texas-headlines","12":"tag-texas-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234978","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=234978"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234978\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/234979"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=234978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=234978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=234978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}