SPOKANE, Wash. — UCLA has won 124 national championships in school history. The women’s basketball team comes into its home gym of Pauley Pavilion and sees banners for 11 men’s basketball titles, nine gymnastics championships and 25 national titles for volleyball.
It’s a seemingly impossible legacy to live up to, but one the Bruins women’s basketball team has never shied away from chasing. It’s one step closer to clearing a space of its own in that hallowed gym after a 72-65 win over LSU to send the Bruins to their first Final Four in NCAA Tournament history.
“Everyone came to UCLA for this reason, to do something we haven’t done,” junior Gabriela Jaquez said. “Proud of my teammates, the staff, the coaches for just continuing to get better every day and grow.”
This milestone has been a long time coming for the program, which experienced success in the AIAW era — a title in 1978 and another final four in 1979 — but had yet to translate it into the modern era of the NCAA Tournament. For decades, women’s basketball has been an afterthought in the Bruins’ athletic powerhouse.
UCLA took a chance on Cori Close, then a longtime assistant coach at UC Santa Barbara and Florida State, in 2011. The administration believed she could elevate the program with her mission to build “an elite program that teaches, mentors and equips women for life beyond college.”
Who doesn’t love confetti ?! 🎉 @UCLAWBB #MarchMadness x #WFinalFour pic.twitter.com/0iRsRfmich
— NCAA March Madness (@MarchMadnessWBB) March 30, 2025
Assistant coach Tony Newnan was semi-retired, selling real estate in Santa Barbara when he got the call to join Close, who had coached with him on the Gauchos staff. Shannon LeBeauf was a rising coaching star who had worked with multiple national players of the year at Duke when she chose to help a first-time head coach build a foundation in Los Angeles. LeBeauf said she would have gotten out of coaching if she hadn’t felt fully in sync with the process. Both have stayed with Close for the entirety of her UCLA tenure.
“I had a vision and I believed in surrounding myself with people that were smarter than me and that would be aligned in that vision, but they still had to take a risk on me,” Close said. “That’s not an easy risk to take when someone’s unproven, and I’ll be eternally grateful for that risk that they took.”
The early returns for the Close era were promising on the court. The Bruins brought in the No. 1 recruiting class in 2014. That group won the WNIT as freshmen, went to the NCAA Sweet 16 the next season, and peaked with an Elite Eight appearance as seniors, but that remained the high point for the Bruins until now.
Close, her staff, and the university continued to believe that the program was fulfilling its promise to the women who came through, even if that didn’t manifest itself in wins.
“She pours her heart and soul into the program, into the lives of everybody in the program,” said Newnan, who was recently named the 2025 Division I assistant coach of the year. “She’s achieved so much off the court in the lives of everybody.”
UCLA also turned out a number of WNBA pros, including Jordin Canada, Monique Billings, 2021 rookie of the year Michaela Onyenwere, and 2024 champion Kennedy Burke.
Past greats supported Close throughout. Denise Curry and Ann Meyers-Drysdale, who were part of the AIAW title and have their numbers retired, are season-ticket holders who check in regularly.
“They have celebrated every step,” Close said. “They have been behind us, they have donated, they have showed up, they have believed in our mission. And I don’t appreciate them as much today as I do on the darkest days. That’s when they showed up in the trenches with me and said, ‘Hey, hang in there. We believe in what you’re doing, and we’re behind you 100 percent.’”
The big break for Close came in 2022, when she brought in her second top-ranked class, headlined by Kiki Rice, Jaquez and Londynn Jones. They breathed new life into a roster that had missed the NCAA Tournament the prior season and needed an influx of talent to compete at the highest levels. The top-ranked player in that class, Lauren Betts, joined UCLA from Stanford the following season, and the No. 3 and No. 6 players (Janiah Barker and Timea Gardiner) came aboard in 2024.
The main goal had always been to win, and the Bruins finally had a roster that could realistically achieve that. A lack of historical success and a recent trend of coming up short in big games dimmed UCLA’s self-belief, but this was the challenge Close was waiting for.
All of the intangibles Close had been preaching throughout her time at UCLA — visualizing success, resetting to neutral in chaotic atmospheres, earning confidence by conquering challenges, choosing “we” over “me” — coincided with a team that could take those principles and execute them on the basketball court.
These Bruins are the culmination of 14 years of Close’s vision, a talented team that plays for and with each other in her image. That it happened at UCLA is even sweeter.
“Cori’s way is the Wooden way,” LeBeauf said. “A lot of what he built his program around is instilled in her, and I’m proud of her for sticking to her guns.”
Postgame locker room vibes were all the way up! 📈#GoBruins pic.twitter.com/lgyfcX0GGm
— UCLA Women’s Basketball (@UCLAWBB) March 31, 2025
There is pressure and privilege to coaching a basketball team in the perpetual shadow of John Wooden, at a university that doesn’t have room to recognize accomplishments short of national titles. LeBeauf, who serves as the Bruins’ recruiting coordinator, says she feels a responsibility to put something new in the team’s trophy case whenever she recruits visits. She joked that the Bruins prefer to practice in the practice facility to avoid looking at all of the banners inside of the gym.
“How do you not feel privileged to be at a place like UCLA with a history that it has?” she said. “At the same time, you want to carry your weight. … To be at a place like UCLA and to be able to add to that collection will be something meaningful, but it is something that keeps you motivated and pushing every single day.”
This season is the crowning achievement of Close’s career, and a bright spot in a Bruins’ women’s basketball legacy that is growing by the day. Everyone on this team came together to pursue a championship. They believed it was possible when the track record suggested otherwise.
Although the Bruins celebrated their Final Four berth with boundless enthusiasm, stacking hats on top of each other’s heads during postgame interviews and sending an endless line of staffers to cut the nets, this isn’t where the journey ends.
At UCLA, the standard has been set higher, staring down from the rafters at Pauley Pavilion.
(Photo of Cori Close: Tyler McFarland / NCAA Photos via Getty Images)