It took 359 days for No. 1-seed UCLA to get back to the Final Four after their blowout loss against eventual national champion UConn last season, but they have arrived in Arizona and are ready to lift their first national title.
First, they have Texas standing in their way and South Carolina or UConn then waiting for them from the other side of the bracket in the championship game. The question is: Are they now ready to win?
After their 70-58 loss to the Huskies in last year’s Final Four, head coach
Cori Close made it clear during her postgame media availability that this was a learning moment for her team. She asserted:
They handed it to us. That being said, we got to learn from this. We’ve obviously gone to new heights this year. But we got to let the pain of this hopefully teach us to go to new heights next year and learn from this and be better the next time. Really unusual to be in this position at the Final Four and have zero seniors in your locker room. And to have an opportunity to come back stronger, more connected, learning from this experience and be better the next time.
UCLA did learn from that loss.
They came back this year with a predominantly senior-run team and ran through the Big Ten, going 18-0 in the conference. They went on to win the Big Ten Tournament, earned the No. 1 seed on their side of the NCAA Tournament bracket and breezed through their opponents through the first four rounds, winning all their tournament games by an average of 27 points.
However, what this year will be remembered by is what happens next.
UCLA has the team capable of winning it all, and among more than 350 Division I teams that competed for the national title, they are one of the four for which that dream remains alive. Now it’s time to see if they can get it done.
Everything starts and ends with Lauren Betts
Lauren Betts is far and away UCLA’s best player.
To reach their ultimate goal, she’ll have to be on top of her game. She is averaging 17.2 points and 8.6 rebounds per game this season. With her scoring, dominance on the glass and defensive presence, she is in the running to be named the best player in the nation.
Feeding her the ball early and running the UCLA offense through her will be critical. If UCLA does that and Betts has elite offensive scoring games, then they’ll have as good a chance as anyone at cutting down the nets this weekend.
Can UCLA exorcise demons past and present?
For UCLA to win it all, they’ll have to defeat teams that they haven’t been able to beat before.
They have just one loss this season, and that came at the hands of Texas, their Final Four opponent. In that contest, Betts struggled, scoring just eight points.
If they make it past Texas, on the other side could be the team that ended their title aspirations last sesaon in No. 1-overall seed UConn. The Huskies are still undefeated and in pursuit of another perfect season, which would be their seventh in the program’s history.
UCLA can find confidence in the fact that their other possible national championship opponent, South Carolina, is a team they did beat early last season. So, they can believe that they can take down a Dawn Staley-coached team.
The other good news for UCLA is that they are exactly where they wanted to be at the start of the year. They are just two wins away from being champions.
Now, it’s time to go out there and execute and turn potential and promise into basketball immortality.
