Cori Close has spent 15 seasons building something at UCLA that people were not sure the program could become. This afternoon, it became a national champion.
The Bruins dismantled South Carolina 79-51 in the women’s NCAA title game, producing a 28-point margin of victory that ranks as the third largest in the history of the championship game. UCLA never trailed, opened a double-digit lead after the first quarter and turned the game into a rout in the third with a 25-9 outscoring of the Gamecocks in that period alone, the largest single-quarter margin in championship game history.
The win gave UCLA its first NCAA championship in women’s basketball and denied South Carolina a third title in five seasons under head coach Dawn Staley. The Bruins had previously won a title in 1978 under the AIAW, before the NCAA assumed control of the championship tournament in 1982.
How the Bruins won it
Lauren Betts anchored the effort from the opening possession, as Close had her team attack the basket immediately and feed the 6-foot-7 center in the paint. South Carolina had no reliable counter to Betts’s combination of size and skill near the rim. She finished with 14 points, 11 rebounds and three blocks on 6-of-10 shooting and was named the tournament’s Most Outstanding Player.
Gabriela Jaquez, who has played her entire career at UCLA, had perhaps the most complete performance of the night. She finished with 21 points, 10 rebounds and five assists, making shots, creating for teammates and cleaning the glass with equal effectiveness. All five UCLA starters scored in double figures, and all six of the team’s senior contributors put points on the board.
South Carolina, which ranks fourth in the country in offensive efficiency, shot 29% from the field and 13% from three-point range. The Gamecocks’ lone reliable offensive presence was Tessa Johnson, who finished with 14 points on 6-of-12 shooting. The rest of South Carolina’s starters combined to shoot 25.8% from the floor. Agot Makeer added 11 points off the bench as the only other Gamecocks player to shoot 50% or better.
UCLA finished with a 49-37 rebounding advantage and posted a 23-13 assist-to-turnover ratio. The Bruins shot 43% from the field and made 8 of 19 attempts from three-point range.
The larger story behind the championship
The title is the product of a decade-long build that accelerated significantly in recent years. UCLA leaned on the transfer portal to reshape its roster, with four of its six top scorers having started their college careers elsewhere, including Betts, who transferred from Stanford. Close said earlier in the week that she plans to add approximately five more transfers to next year’s team.
The program also benefited from leaving the collapsing Pac-12 for the Big Ten, a move that dramatically increased financial resources. UCLA reported roughly $19.9 million in media rights revenue in its final Pac-12 season. Big Ten schools received approximately $60 million each in similar distributions last season. The championship is the first for the Big Ten in women’s basketball since 1999.
Close entered Today as the longest-tenured head coach at a single school to win a first national title, and she did it at a program that made the NCAA Tournament just once in her first four years and has now played in nine of the last 11. Her base salary of $877,500 this season stands well below the $4.25 million Staley earned at South Carolina, a disparity that became a talking point during UCLA’s rise and that Close has addressed publicly.
She has also been an outspoken advocate for greater resources and media coverage for women’s basketball, pushing the NCAA and the sport’s stakeholders toward the kind of investment that produces programs capable of competing at the level the Bruins demonstrated Sunday.
South Carolina entered the game with five players who had previously competed in a national title game. That experience did not prevent UCLA from outplaying the Gamecocks at every phase, extending a run in Phoenix that also included holding Texas 41 points below its season scoring average in Friday’s national semifinal. The Bruins finished the tournament having never trailed in either Final Four game, leaving Phoenix with a championship and a program identity that figures to keep them in these conversations for years to come.