UCLA’s journey for first national title begins Saturday in NCAA Tournament

In a nod to the challenges ahead, UCLA women’s basketball players wore “MARCH MODE” T-shirts as they watched the NCAA Tournament selection show.

What they saw had a very March 2024 and March 2025 feel as much as it did the present month.

For the third consecutive year, UCLA might have to beat LSU to get to the Final Four.

Also included in the Bruins’ Sacramento 2 bracket are Richmond and Ole Miss — teams they faced in the NCAA Tournament last year.

Their opening game against Cal Baptist at Pauley Pavilion on Saturday evening is a rematch of their NCAA Tournament opening game from 2024 in the same arena.

Fortunately for the top-seeded Bruins, they don’t care who they’re playing nearly as much as how they’re playing.

“This actually played out most of the way we thought it was going to,” UCLA coach Cori Close told fans and boosters gathered inside the team’s practice facility. “We’re excited for the matchups we have.

“Obviously, we have tremendous respect for everybody in that bracket, but this is about us. This is about us being the best version of ourselves, us playing our best basketball, us being aggressive.”

Forward Angela Dugalic said the “MARCH MODE” T-shirts reflected the team’s locked-in approach since beating Iowa by a record 51 points in the Big Ten Tournament championship.

“We had the mindset of, ‘This is gonna be a Final Four game’ during practice,” Dugalic said of a team seeking a second consecutive Final Four appearance and first NCAA championship to go with the AIAW title the Bruins won in 1978.

That meant that the men’s practice players who helped prepare the team were pressuring the Bruins full court to challenge them and unlock the best version of themselves.

It’s all part of Close’s efforts to seek continual improvement and focus only on the next game.

“Bottom line for us,” Close said, “is that I just really want us to keep a present mindset. What’s the challenge in front of us? How do we play our best basketball for that and earn another day?”

What might seem frightening to anyone who faces a team that has won a program-record 25 consecutive games since losing to Texas in late November is that the Bruins (31–1) say they can get better.

“I like the fact that we don’t think we have a ceiling,” Dugalic said. “I don’t think that we do have a ceiling, and that’s just a really cool fact about us is we’ve got so much potential and we haven’t even scratched the surface.”

Making this the best UCLA team of Close’s 15 seasons has been its ability to surround point guard Kiki Rice with so many sharpshooters. Gianna Kneepkens has made 44.2 percent of her 3-pointers and Gabriela Jaquez has shot 41.1 percent from long range.

Having multiple shooters of that caliber has prevented teams from clogging the interior, opening driving lanes for Rice in a way that didn’t happen a year ago.

“It’s a night and day difference, and that makes Kiki a better player,” Close said. “I think that has changed everything for our offense.” 

If history repeats itself, the first two rounds don’t figure to be packed with drama. UCLA has won the six NCAA Tournament games that it’s hosted at Pauley Pavilion over the past three years by an average of 19 points, though there was a close call against Creighton in the second round in 2024.

Things could start to get spicy in Sacramento.

In the Sweet 16, the Bruins could face fourth-seeded Minnesota — a Big Ten rival they defeated by 18 points in January in Minneapolis — before playing second-seeded LSU or third-seeded Duke in the Elite Eight.

Facing the Tigers this time of year has become an annual tradition. Two years ago, LSU beat UCLA in the Sweet 16. A year ago, the Bruins returned the favor in the Elite Eight.

Waiting in the Final Four could be fellow top seeds Texas, South Carolina and UConn, the defending champion and top overall No. 1 seed that beat UCLA by 22 points on the same stage a year ago.

Benefiting the Bruins is a route that would include going from Los Angeles to Sacramento to Phoenix, keeping them in the Pacific Time Zone from the first round to the Final Four.

“I’ve never in my 33 years of Division I coaching been able to stay in the exact same time zone, it’s never happened,” Close said, “and I do think it’s a tremendous advantage, especially for our players — who are in final exams right now — to be able to not have that added stress of traveling across the country is a tremendous thing, so really excited about having that opportunity that we’ve earned.”

It could be a key difference for a team trying to forge a new finish amid so much familiarity.

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