by Paul Teetor
The easy part is over.
Now comes the hard part.
The UCLA women’s basketball team survived and advanced to the Final Four of the NCAA Tournament for the second consecutive year Sunday afternoon.
But there’ll be no celebrating in Westwood.
Not yet.
Not until they at least get to the championship game next Sunday. Even better would be if they finally win the first NCAA women’s championship in school history.
That caution on premature celebrations is because the Bruins made the Final Four last year – and were promptly stopped dead in their tracks when they got blasted by 34 points by the University of Connecticut in a semifinal game that scarred them badly – so badly that only a title game victory a year later can remove the sting of that humiliating defeat.
But here’s the kicker: to achieve that goal they first have to beat Texas in the semifinals. And Texas just happens to be the only team to beat them this season, way back on November 26.
The Bruins have won 29 straight games on their way to a 35-1 record, but that one loss looms large in the collective consciousness of the six seniors on the team – including star center Lauren Betts and the other four starters.
If they do beat Texas and get that monkey off their back, then they almost surely will face number one overall seed Connecticut and its arrogant, know-it-all, trash talking coach Geno Auriemma.
After a very shaky performance in its Elite Eight 70-58 victory over third-seeded Duke Sunday afternoon, the Bruins are no lock to beat either Texas – also a number one seed – or UConn, the undefeated defending champion who have been to the Final Four so often in the last 20 years that they take it as their birth right at the beginning of every season.
The Bruins win over Duke Sunday afternoon was a tale of two halves – the first two quarters when they looked scared and overwhelmed by the moment, and the second two quarters when they looked dominant and like a team ready to take that next step to a national championship.
A national championship would be celebrated wildly in Westwood. Sure, the men have won 11 NCAA titles, but the last one was way back in 1995 – ancient history now.
And before that you have to go back to the John Wooden era of the 1960’s and 70’s when they were dominating college basketball in a way that will never be duplicated for a variety of reasons – including the heavy traffic in the transfer portal and the staggering sums of NIL money being offered to star players for use of their name, image and likeness.
UCLA led for exactly 26 seconds of the first half against Duke, and then everything that could go wrong for the Bruins did go wrong.
Everyone in the house knew they were going to force feed the ball inside to Betts, their 6-foot-7 superstar center who is likely to be the top pick in the WNBA draft that takes place April 13.
But in order for that predictable tactic to be effective, two things have to happen: Betts has to hit some layups, and the perimeter players passing the ball into her have to hit an occasional three pointer to keep the defenders honest and open up the passing lanes.
Neither of those things happened for UCLA in the first half, and the result was predictable: they fell behind early on and kept falling farther behind. At the halftime buzzer it was 39-31 Duke, and Bruin fans were sweating bullets. Betts had only scored eight points, she continually missed bunnies she normally makes, and UCLA didn’t seem to have a Plan B.
The only previous game they trailed at half time was Nov 26 against Texas – and that was their only loss in a 35-1 season. So Bruins fans had plenty of reasons to worry. Were they looking at another collapse to a team they should beat handily?
Nope.
As soon as the second half started, Gabriela Jauquz hit a three-pointer and the whole vibe in the game changed.
Too one-dimensional in the first half, UCLA now started hitting outside shots when the defense ganged up on Betts.
The result was a 20-8 UCLA edge in the third quarter. Duke got 16 points off turnovers in the first half – and none in the second half.
A few minutes into the second half Gianna Kneepkens’ long ponytail swished as she swiftly stepped to the top of the key. She released the shot, knowing she was in the right place.
“Anyone that’s open, we think it’s going in every single time,” Kneepkens said.
The prediction prevailed, and UCLA’s second triple of the game polished off a 9-0 scoring run in the third quarter that helped the Bruins adjust their course and remain steady to beat Duke.
The experience of having multiple consecutive deep tournament runs and a senior-heavy team had prepared UCLA to make the adjustments needed after a low-scoring, high-turnover first half. The Bruins outscored the third-seeded Blue Devils 39-19 in the second half.
“We’ve been in really tough moments,” senior guard Kiki Rice said. “We’ve been in games where we’ve been down, and we had to make a comeback in the second half, so I just think we had a very calm nature about us. We knew we needed to make adjustments, so we had trust and belief that we would be able to do that.”
Lauren Betts scored a game-high 23 points on 9-for-14 shooting while pulling down 10 rebounds. The Bruins were feeding the ball to Betts and the Blue Devils’ answer was to collapse their defense on anyone who got the ball in the paint.
Adding to the Bruins’ struggles, they turned the ball over 12 times in the first half. UCLA guard Kiki Rice flashed her ball-handling skills with a turnaround dribble and Euro step layup to cut Duke’s lead to 25-23, but the ACC champions extended their lead to roughly 10 points and held on to that advantage for most of the second quarter by dominating the mid-range with efficient shooting.
“What I said to the team in the locker room after that was just like, hey, even now, even this time, we can’t change,” UCLA head coach Cori Close said. “What does this teach us? What do we learn from it? How do we take the experience of that first half and help us be better prepared?”
Angela Dugalić’s grittiness held the team together in key moments down the stretch. She grabbed a loose ball after a missed 3-pointer by Rice for a buzzer-beating layup to close out the third quarter, and made a tough layup early in the fourth. She made the ensuing free throw to give UCLA a 56-47 lead.
With three minutes left in the game, she hooked in a layup as the shot clock expired to pull the Bruins ahead 65-56 and give her team enough cushion to finish out the win.
The Bruins have plenty of reasons to be wary of a premature celebration. The parallels between last season and this season are eerie: they arrived at the Final Four as a number one seed led by the best post player in the land in Betts.
Now it’s time for Betts to dominate the best. Otherwise, UConn is going to win once again.
The easy part is over.
Now comes the hard part.
Contact: teetor.paul@gmail.com
