NCAA Women's Basketball Tournament: How to Watch and Game Thread - #1 Seed UCLA Bruins vs. #8 Seed Richmond Spiders
The Bruins look to continue their Road to the Final Four when face the Spiders in the final game of the year at Pauley Pavilion.
Tonight, the #1 overall seed UCLA women’s basketball team faces the #8 seed Richmond Spiders at Pauley Pavilion in the Second Round of the NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament. Tip-off is set for 7 pm on ESPN.
It’s the last home game of the season for the Bruins. If they win tonight, they will move on to the Sweet 16 in Spokane on Friday night to face #5 seed Ole Miss who defeated #4 seed Baylor today, 69-63.
Last Time Out
On Friday night, the Bruins easily defeated the Southern Jaguars by 38 points, despite the fact that the second quarter was a little rough.
Six Bruins finished in double figures with Lauren Betts leading the way with 14, followed Londynn Jones with 11. Gabriela Jaquez, Kiki Rice, Janiah Barker and Elina Aarnisalo all finished with 10 points each. Barker led the Bruins with 10 rebounds to earn her sixth double-double of the season.
Two more Bruins were right on the cusp of double figures. Both Angela Dugalić and Timea Gardner had nine points a piece.
It’s hard to see how UCLA could have dominated the Jaguars any more, but yesterday in the off-day press conference, head coach Cori Close said, “We didn't think we played to our identity the way we'd like to yesterday and so that's going to be our number one focus….”
As she continued, she sounded Wooden-esque.
“[F]irst when are we at our best and can we all be counted on to execute the scout and be at our best with the things under our control one game at a time,” she added.
Of course, Coach Close is known to be someone who takes Coach Wooden’s philosophies to heart.
Later on in the presser, I asked Coach Close about her favorite lesson from Coach Wooden that she’s tried to instill in the team.
“Honestly I wrote this in my prayer journal this morning: May I define success the way Coach Wooden taught me even in the midst of this March Madness run. I think that [doesn't] make us less competitive. It makes us more competitive, but may I always remember that he had taught me that I'm not coaching people's jump shots I'm coaching people's hearts. He always said, too though, if you coach their hearts really well, usually their jump shots end up pretty good too. But he always cared more about impacting their lives than impacting wins and the great news is when you really do that selflessly and consistently and you have a high attention to detail, it ends up impacting winning too. But, honestly, my…literally…my prayer this morning was that I would be somebody that stayed mission-minded and maintained perspective even and with the most stakes and the highest pressure just like he taught me and, funny, he won 10 national championships in 12 years. So, it obviously works.”
It doesn’t get much better than that.
Of course, before UCLA played Southern on Friday, the Richmond Spiders took on the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets. The Spiders won that game easily by a score of 74-49. Personally, I thought the game might be a lot closer given the fact that Richmond is a #8 seed and the Yellow Jackets were the #9 seed.
In that game, two players on Richmond almost outscored Georgia Tech by themselves. junior forward Maggie Doogan was lights out, scoring 30 points in the game and half of those points came on threes. She made five of her eight attempts in the game from beyond the arc. Doogan also pulled down 15 rebounds, all but one of which came on defense, for her sixth double-double of the season.
Meanwhile, grad forward Addie Budnik added 14 more points for the Spiders. Junior guard Rachel Ullstrom also scored nine points in the game.
Interestingly, Richmond head coach Aaron Roussell completely emptied his bench in the final minutes of the game, giving six of his reserves an opportunity to play in an NCAA Tournament game, even if just for a short period of time.
Richmond Spiders’ Starting Five
Roussell will start a lineup of three guards and two forwards.
The starting forwards are the two players who stood out on Friday night. Doogan has averaged 16.7 ppg over the course of the season. It shouldn’t come as a surprise after Friday that she’s also the team’s leading rebounder with an average of 7.2 rpg; however, she also leads the team in both assists with 126 this season and blocks with 38.
Budnik is averaging 10.7 ppg and 4.1 rpg, which is third on the team in both categories. Her 99 assists are also third on the team as well.
The third Spider averaging in double figures is Ullstrom. She’s averaging 15.3 ppg. In addition to being second in scoring, she’s also second in rebounding with an average of 5.0 rpg. Ullstrom tends to be the Spider who takes the most three-point shots. She’s taken 193 this season and made 42% of them, though she only tried two threes on Friday, compared to Doogan’s eight three-point attempts.
The final two starting guards come to Richmond from the Great State of New Jersey. Sophomore Ally Sweeney attended Sparta HS in Northern NJ while senior Katie Hill played her high school ball at St. John Vianney where she won two state titles. Sweeney typically scores 8.0 ppg while Hill averages 6.5 ppg.
Yesterday, I got to ask Hill what it’s like to be the second-most famous person from Colts Neck, NJ. She laughed in response, knowing very well that the most famous resident of the town in Central NJ is rock star Bruce Springsteen. While she doesn’t see him much, she said that she basically lives right across the street from him.
Analysis
In order to stop the Spiders, the Bruins will need to slow down Doogan and Budnik. That’s much easier said than done, especially when Ullstrom can also be a threat from beyond the arc.
On Friday, Doogan missed four of her first five shots before settling down to make 10 of her next 13.
In her press conference yesterday, Coach Close indicated that the Bruins had a lapse in executing their game plan during the game on Friday against Southern. Close mentioned that the players knew what they should have been doing, but just weren’t doing it.
As Coach Wooden would say, “Failure is never fatal, but failure to change might be.” If the Bruins fail to execute tonight’s game plan this evening, stopping a tough Richmond team will certainly be more difficult.
The key, of course, is to survive such challenges and advance to the next round. They did it on Friday. I expect them do it again tonight.
Listen to the Game With TMB
Tonight’s game will be broadcast on ESPN with Dave O’Brien, Christy Winters-Scott, and Holly Rowe on the call. Of course, you can choose to listen to Dave Marcus call the game for the Bruins by listening online. To do that, just right-click on the link below so that you can open up another tab and have it going while you chat in the comments below. Listen to today’s game online.
This is your UCLA women’s basketball vs. Richmond Spiders NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament game thread. Here’s how to watch, listen and stream today’s game:
NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament Second Round
Opponents: #1 Seed UCLA Women’s Basketball (31-2) vs. #8 seed Richmond Spiders (28-6)
Series Record: First meeting
When: 7:00 pm PT, Sunday, March 23, 2025
Where: Pauley Pavilion, Los Angeles, CA
TV: ESPN with Dave O’Brien, Christy Winters-Scott, and Holly Rowe
Live Stream: WatchESPN.com and the ESPN app
Online Audio: uclabruins.com
Live Stats: NCAA Gamecenter
Tournament Notes:
UCLA
Go Bruins!!!
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I'll repeat it in the postgame article, but sitting at courtside when this place gets loud it gets LOUD. Literally deafening, not sure how an opponent hears anything when Pauley is rocking.
Betts has to recognize that she can contest shots on the outside without being on top of her opponent. Think Aday Mara here: she has superior length to everyone else on the court, so she needs to just get tall to alter the shot. She did it once there, and if she does that more often she can impact things much better.