amid drama between head coaches Geno Auriemma and Dawn Staley<\/a>.<\/p>\nThe Bruins ultimately had the cushion they needed to get the job done in one of the ugliest games of their season and the tournament, thanks to getting hot in the fourth quarter as offense was difficult to come by for both teams. By the beginning of the fourth quarter, UCLA led just 31-28. But Close\u2019s team rattled off a 7-0 run in the first two minutes of the final period, which ended up being just enough \u2014 especially after Texas made a 7-0 run of its own late to bring the game within three points with a little more than a minute to play.<\/p>\n
Star center Lauren Betts led the way with 16 points and had some help from guards Gabriela Jaquez and Gianna Kneepkens, who finished with 10 each.<\/p>\n
Texas star Madison Booker, meanwhile, scored just 6 points and shot 3-of-23 shooting from the field on an uncharacteristically cold night for the Longhorns\u2019 most dominant player. Texas as a team shot just 31 percent from the field, though the Bruins weren\u2019t much better with their 41 percent clip.<\/p>\n
The win on Friday comes after Texas beat UCLA in late November by 11 points. Betts had just 8 points in the Las Vegas matchup. Perhaps more importantly? This victory is a year after the Bruins were blown out by UConn in the Final Four and left Tampa crushed after their best team in decades fell short of playing for the ultimate prize.<\/p>\n
Betts, a senior, was asked Thursday if there was any added pressure for this Bruins squad, which is loaded with fellow seniors who know what\u2019s on the line in Phoenix.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think in the back of our heads, we all know that this is our last go at this,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s all or nothing for all of us.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Bruins will need to have a more productive outing Sunday if they want to hang with South Carolina, which beat UConn 62-48. The Gamecocks are averaging 86.5 points per game for the season.<\/p>\n
The Bruins and Gamecocks did not play this season, but UCLA won by 15 points in last year\u2019s regular-season meeting.<\/p>\n
This story will be updated.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PHOENIX \u2014 Cori Close said Thursday that her biggest regret of last year\u2019s postseason was that she didn\u2019t…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":563576,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[399,398,396,397,99,5690,17392,2664],"class_list":{"0":"post-563575","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-ncaa","10":"tag-ncaa-football","11":"tag-ncaafootball","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-texas-longhorns","14":"tag-ucla-bruins","15":"tag-womens-college-basketball"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=563575"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563575\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/563576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=563575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=563575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=563575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}