One by one, UCLA women’s basketball coach Cori Close substituted out her starting lineup in the final minutes of her team’s national championship victory Sunday.
Point guard Kiki Rice, a senior.
All-American center Lauren Betts, a senior.
Gabriela Jaquez, a senior.
Gianna Kneepkens, a graduate student.
No other team in college basketball this season, men’s or women’s, designed its roster to be as veteran-dependent as UCLA, whose 12-player roster featured eight who were either seniors or graduate students. During the NCAA Tournament, Close's rotation of playing time featured almost exclusively her oldest players. Those choices added pressure to Sunday’s national title showdown against South Carolina — because if the Bruins didn’t capitalize and win a title now, before virtually their entire rotation departed for the WNBA, there might not be a better chance in the future.
Instead, UCLA routed South Carolina 79-51 to win the program’s first NCAA title in a fashion that may never happen again. The Bruins' players, in their final year of eligibility, scored all 130 of the team’s Final Four points, and 170 consecutive points in all dating to earlier in the tournament.
Women’s college basketball rosters skew older than men’s rosters in part because of WNBA rules. Under the league’s new collective bargaining agreement, only players who have graduated from college and are at least four years removed from high school or turn 22 during their draft year are eligible for the WNBA draft. Still, that hasn’t caused teams to go all in on a single class the way UCLA did as it constructed its championship roster. Since 2000, the award for the Most Outstanding Player of the women’s Final Four has gone to a senior only nine times.
Yet the unconventionally top-heavy roster blueprint worked for UCLA, which ended the season on a 31-game winning streak to become the first national champion from the Big Ten Conference since 1999.
“It’s truly indescribable,” Close said of her seniors in a postgame interview on ABC. “The loyalty, the steadfast spirit, their character that they’ve chosen day in and day out. I’m so humbled that they chose to commit to our mission.”
That mission, initially, wasn't to win a title for UCLA.
Of the six seniors or grad students who led UCLA in scoring this season, only two, Rice and Jaquez, started their careers in Westwood at UCLA.
Betts, the Big Ten Player of the Year, was a transfer from Stanford. In 2021, Angela Dugalić, a 6-foot-4 star who played off the bench this season, transferred in after one season at Oregon. Charlisse Leger-Walker transferred two years ago from Washington State. And Gianna Kneepkens arrived one year ago after transferring from Utah.
By building its roster using the transfer portal, UCLA isn't an exception. South Carolina also used the portal to add two of its top players this season in Ta’Niya Latson and Madina Okot. But relaxed NCAA rules that allow quick transfers and instant eligibility do not always translate to immediate chemistry.
“It’s not going to magically happen,” South Carolina coach Dawn Staley told reporters this weekend.
It didn’t happen immediately for the Bruins, either. Last season, UCLA advanced to its first Final Four in program history but was blown out by UConn, 85-51, the largest margin of victory ever in a national semifinal.
In March, Jaquez told ESPN that the blowout loss became a rallying cry throughout the offseason that followed, during weight-room sessions last summer and as practices resumed this fall in Westwood. UCLA found its difference-makers this season in players like Leger-Walker, the New Zealand native who had transferred to UCLA in 2024 but sat out last season with an injury. Leger-Walker scored 10 points in 26 minutes against South Carolina, but Close told reporters Saturday that her impact on UCLA began even while she was injured.
“Probably one of the biggest connectors on our team is Charlisse Leger-Walker,” Close said. “She’s only been here two years. If you asked every player about who’s one of the biggest people who has brought us to be a whole and not just individual parts, they would say her.”
Kneepkens, who transferred from Utah last offseason, also provided the Bruins a different element with her 42% shooting on 3-pointers, the 14th-best mark in the country this season. No other teammate shot better than 38%.
Rice this season produced career bests in points, field-goal accuracy, rebounds and steals. Jaquez played one of the best games of her career in the title game, exploding for 21 points, including dagger 3-pointers in the second half that pushed the Bruins' lead to more than 30.
"We had a feeling this was our time, this was our year," Rice said after the game. "We came out there this entire weekend, and we would not be denied."
Well before the game was a blowout, however, Betts was superb on building an 11-point lead after one quarter, the second-largest deficit South Carolina faced all season after the opening quarter.
"She has improved from last year, she’s patient. I mean, she got, what, four seniors around her?" South Carolina's Raven Johnson said after the game. "She’s a senior herself. Experience go a long way."
On the eve of Sunday’s championship game, Betts said that “I really wish that I could have, like, a thousand more years” with her fellow seniors and grad students, whom she called her best friends. The team will look drastically different next season, with Close saying — in an all-time understatement — that UCLA will be busy recruiting transfers during the offseason.
"There's no better way," Rice said, "we could hope to end our career."
