LOS ANGELES (AP) — It’s an hour before tipoff and Patti Close takes her usual seat near the UCLA bench. Mother Bruin is in the house, ready to cheer on the team coached by her daughter, Cori Close.
That reassuring presence is felt whenever the players take the floor.
The next game is Saturday, when the overall No. 2 seeded Bruins
(31-1) open March Madness against 16th-seeded Cal Baptist (23-10) at Pauley Pavilion.“She’s like the mayor,” Cori Close said.
Patti Close’s spirited attitude and energy belie her 80 years. She drives herself to games, arriving an hour before tipoff. Once, when Cori Close was an assistant at Florida State, she noticed her mother was late.
“She told me, ‘Don’t you ever do that again,’” Patti Close recalled.
Cori Close says, “I just need to know she’s safe.”
At halftime, a steady stream of people stop by her mother’s seat to visit.
Post-game finds Patti Close in the interview room “to hear the straight scoop,” she said.
Before Patti Close’s marriage of 53 years ended with the death of her husband, Don, a few years ago, the couple attended games together. Being directly involved with the team helps fill the void.
“That’s a gift to me, for our team to be so kind to my mom, to give purpose for my mom,” Cori Close said.
UCLA men’s coach Mick Cronin keeps his widower father close, too. Hep Cronin spends part of the season in California to follow the team and escape the cold weather back home in Ohio.
Since Cori Close got the UCLA job in 2011, her mother has accompanied the team to Europe and Africa.
“I never even had a passport,” Patti Close said. “It’s a dream. I love the kids. I always joke that I fall in love with them and they have the nerve to leave and graduate. How dare they.”
Spending time around the team keeps her young and current, too.
“My husband had this expression: you’re never too old to be immature,” she said.
Cori Close also had her two sisters, an aunt and two cousins at last year’s NCAA Tournament, when the Bruins made their first Final Four and lost to eventual national champion UConn in the semifinals.
“Our family has not been together this much in probably over a decade," she said, ”and so it’s really a privilege that I could use my job to be able to experience that."
The players are regular visitors to Cori Close’s upscale house near the Westwood campus. They’ll cook and watch movies together.
“Cori always says the team that is connected off the court is going to be more connected on the court,” Patti Close said.
She often bunks at her daughter’s place on game nights rather than travel 30 minutes to her own five-bedroom house in the San Fernando Valley, where she gardens and walks a mile after dinner.
After games, mother and daughter share what Cori Close calls “afterglow.” She’ll pour a glass of wine for herself while her mother reviews the box score and rehashes the media session.
“I usually joke that I’m placating her,” Cori Close said, “but probably if I’m really honest, it’s sort of a safety net for me, too.”
When the time comes, Patti Close could move onto her daughter’s property, which has room to accommodate a backyard cottage.
“I’m not ready for Cori to be my boss,” Patti Close said. "When you’re in your kids’ territory, it’s her bailiwick.”
The coach’s house is also the scene of dinners for recruits on official visits and their parents. Patti Close always arrives early and helps set up.
“I do my sales job and tell them that we will take care of their kid,” she said, “which is the main thing I was interested in when Cori was being recruited.”
Once, a recruit’s grandmother attended, and Patti Close made it a point to chat her up.
She reassured the father of Bruins senior guard Kiki Rice that his daughter would be in good hands far from her home in Washington, D.C.
“It’s really cool to see the kind of family nature within the program,” Kiki Rice said. “Patti is so supportive and always around, and she gets her friends involved, too.”
Rice had shoulder surgery after last year’s Final Four. She received a gift basket with a handknitted blanket from Patti Close.
“It meant a lot to me,” Rice said.
Patti Close was an interior designer for 35 years and she freely dispenses decorating tips to the team’s support staff.
For all the emphasis Cori Close places on creating a tight-knit atmosphere among the team and staff, she doesn’t have a family of her own.
“I never thought that I would not be married,” the 54-year-old coach said. “It stinks that I feel like it’s easier for men to have it all than for women to have it all.”
Close is comforted by her religious faith and a belief that coaching is a calling more than merely a job.
“If I feel like I have some loneliness in terms of being single when I didn’t plan on being single,” she said. “At least I really have so much peace about being in my purpose, and that’s what keeps me going.”
Patti Close said her daughter always knew she wanted to be a coach because it combined the sport she loves with investing in young people’s lives.
Three of the five coaches on Close’s staff are men.
“She wants these young women to see there’s still good ones out there,” Patti Close said. “All these guys, they’re just jewels.”
Patti Close gets her grandmother fix from her youngest daughter’s children, who live in Colorado.
Cori Close was a talker from her youngest days and feisty in nature. Her well-read and politically-minded mother has her own opinions, too.
“Basketball-wise, I have to be so confrontational and hold the bar so tightly that in my personal life I’m much more of a harmony person,” the coach said. ”I want everybody to feel safe, seen and heard."
Patti Close, according to her daughter, is “a borderline contrarian.”
"We definitely butt heads on things,” Cori Close said.
One thing they agree on is basketball.
Whether UCLA’s season ends with the Bruins hoisting the national championship trophy or losing a game for just the second time, it’s going to be hard on Patti Close.
“I pretend that they need me,” she said, laughing. “Don’t tell them.”
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AP March Madness bracket: https://apnews.com/hub/ncaa-womens-bracket and coverage: https://apnews.com/hub/march-madness
