Commentary: Becoming the next South Carolina was always UCLA’s goal. Now it must beat its inspiration
PHOENIX — I must confess, I didn’t believe them.
Four years ago, I listened to then-freshman Kiki Rice and coach Cori Close tell me that their UCLA women’s basketball program would someday be like South Carolina’s.
I didn’t buy it, but I admired their aspirational attitude like I admired someone who dreamed of visiting the moon.
At the time, the Gamecocks were two-time national champions. Now, of course, coach Dawn Staley’s teams have won three NCAA titles — with a shot at four, if she can get her team past Rice, Close and their Bruins in the NCAA women’s basketball championship game on Sunday.
UCLA and South Carolina, the last teams standing in the 2025-26 season.
The best teams in the country.
And besides that, with their hard-fought Final Four victories Friday over Texas and Connecticut, respectively, barometers for other programs that dream of ascending to such elite heights.
And wouldn’t you know it? It’s exactly as Close predicted in November 2022, when her Bruins were off to a 7-0 start with a nationally televised date against the Gamecocks up next.
“Both programs obviously hold themselves to very high standards,” Close said then. “They are a little bit ahead of us, in the fact that they’ve won two national championships. But that’s where we want to be. We want to be that level of a program.”
At the time, Close sounded like the precocious kid at the party who goes around telling the adults that she’s going to be president someday — or in Rice’s case, that her team would be one of the top in the nation.
UCLA players celebrate after defeating Texas in the Final Four on Friday to advance to the NCAA women’s basketball national championship game.
(Ronaldo Bolanos/Los Angeles Times)
“We know we have the talent, the skill and we have the ability to execute and play at the level of a top-five team,” said the point guard who had just arrived in Westwood as the nation’s No. 2 recruit, behind Lauren Betts — who’d join her a season later.
You know how we adults are inclined to respond to such unbridled optimism: With patronizing pats on the head. By lying encouragingly, “Sure, pal, you can do anything you want to!”
How cute.
Oh, but the Bruins were being serious.
They meant it.
Hold the follow-through: They did it.
They talked their talk right into existence, respectfully, reverently.
“This is what we all came here to do,” said Gabriela Jaquez on Friday, a few minutes after the Bruins eked out an oppressive 51-44 victory over Texas to march into the NCAA championship game for the first time in program history.
Rice and Jaquez were the only members of the current Bruins juggernaut who began their college careers as a freshman at UCLA in 2022, when they — then as the nation’s No. 15 team — played the top-ranked Gamecocks respectably in Columbia, losing 74-64.
“It’s kind of full circle playing South Carolina in the national championship game,” said Jaquez, who remembers that first meeting having to deal with Gamecocks star Aliyah Boston in front of a packed Colonial Life Arena.
“Yeah, crazy. And we played ‘em again right in the Sweet 16.”
That season ended with another loss to South Carolina, 59-43, in the Sweet 16.
The following season, the Bruins lost again in the Sweet 16, this time in a 78-69 nailbiter against Louisiana State.
And then, by the time UCLA and South Carolina completed their home-and-home set in 2024, UCLA was really starting to fulfill the prophecy it had laid out for itself.
The Bruins dismantled South Carolina 77-62 in a November game at Pauley Pavilion, launching themselves on a path toward the program’s first NCAA Final Four appearance last March, when their season ended with an 85-51 national semifinal loss to UConn.
“Just stacking those days,” Close said after UCLA beat Duke in the Elite Eight last week. “What did that experience teach us? What got exposed there? How do we adjust, whether it’s roster construction, whether it’s skill development, whether it’s mentality, what point does every single thing teach us?
“It’s staying the course on what you believe to be the values of what leads to winning. And I really emphasize what leads to it … winning is a byproduct. We’ve just tried to keep a growth mindset of it all and try to let every situation teach us.”
So there will be no rematch with the Huskies — the Gamecocks beat them 62-48 on Friday — but there will be another opportunity to test themselves against South Carolina, model program, paragon of hoop and the only team standing between them and a national championship.
“South Carolina has been, you know, one of the best programs in basketball for the past many years,” Rice said Friday. “A ton of respect to the program and the culture that Dawn has built over there.
“But I honestly think that the biggest thing is just gonna be like, ‘Look, this is the 2026 UCLA team. This is the 2026 South Carolina team.’ So however we need to prepare for each other, however we need to match up, that’s what it’s going to take.”
I don’t doubt it.
