The Time is Now for UCLA Women's Basketball

It's officially Prove It season for coach Cori Close.

The Bruins have a chance at a special year in 2024. (Photo credit: Caren Nicdao/uclabruins.com)

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Welcome to the offseason, that time when the articles don’t come out as often as we finally start to recharge from the rush of football and basketball. I personally spent the past few weeks doing Parent Teacher Conferences and then enjoying my spring break (including a trip to Wrestlemania which is definitely going to be fodder for this year’s Season Opener), but there are still things happening in UCLA athletics, like baseball and softball and beach volleyball, to say nothing of spring football practice. We’ll talk about those things when the mood strikes, or if something notable happens, but the offseason for us is as much about taking our time and really digging into things that we would normally not have time to talk about during the football/basketball rush. Such are the pitfalls of a two-man operation where this is neither of our day jobs (and, to be perfectly honest, I would never want this to be my day job. I enjoy teaching way too much.)

With that in mind, I wanted to turn my attention to UCLA basketball. Specifically, UCLA women’s basketball, which I try to talk about from time to time but unfortunately often gets overlooked during its season in favor of the men’s team. Well, not today!

Let’s start by talking about this past season: it was really good! Well, ok maybe it depends on your expectations for this team. Preseason, my expectations weren’t very high - this was a young team that was bringing in a ton of talent but was light on experience. UCLA brought in five freshmen this past offseason and all of them averaged at least 10 minutes a game, led by freshman phenom Kiki Rice at 28.1. Throw in sophomore Emily Bessoir who did not play at all the previous season due to a torn ACL, and this was a team that was really set up to compete starting in the 2023-2024 season. The preseason prognostications played into that idea as well; the Pac-12 preseason polls had UCLA in 4th behind a trio of more-talented teams in Stanford, Oregon, and Arizona, while they were unranked in the preseason AP poll, sitting behind those three and Utah in the vote totals. Yes, Charisma Osborne was still on the team which meant they had the talent to compete, but the expectation was that there was going to be a learning curve as the younger players learn to play at the college level.

That mostly played out, but the team showed it was tougher than it looked. The Bruins won 13 of their first 14 games, including an impressive win over Tennessee en route to a Battle 4 Atlantis championship, and the lone loss was an impressive road showing against South Carolina where the Bruins were tied heading into the 4th quarter. The season took a turn when Osbourne got injured in a victory over Oregon, as the team scuttled without their senior leader. UCLA would scuttle to an 11-7 conference record, where you could clearly see the toll of a long season starting to take its effect on the young roster. Still, the talent was clearly there and got to show itself during the Pac-12 Tournament, where the Bruins rattled off an impressive win streak that included knocking off top-ranked Stanford before ultimately losing in the championship game to Washington State. UCLA had an expected outcome in the NCAA Tournament, earning a home regional and winning it before ultimately bowing out after a rematch with South Carolina. The Bruins ended the year ranked 17th, not too shabby considering.

UCLA exceeded expectations this past season, and the hope was that they could maintain that in the offseason heading into 2023-2024. Yes, Charisma Osbourne would be gone, but hopefully the young freshmen would be able to take a leap forward thanks to all the experience they gained this past year.

Except…Charisma Osborne is coming back, and now the calculus has changed.

Osborne’s announcement that she was taking her COVID-eligibility year and returning for one last ride with the Bruins was an unexpected turn of events. The senior was widely mocked to be a top 10 pick in the WNBA Draft, and with coach Cori Close stating she expects her players to make between $50,000 to $75,000 a year in NIL deals, I’m not sure what this says about the WNBA as a great path forward at the moment. Still, UCLA getting back their senior leader is a major is a shock, especially as Osborne had spent much of the last few weeks of the season talking about potentially playing her last games at Pauley Pavilion, and her career-high 36 points to beat Oklahoma in the second round of the NCAA Tournament acting as something of a perfect ending to her UCLA career.

For UCLA, getting Osborne and fellow super senior guard Camryn Brown (who also announced her return on the same day as Osborne) back is a huge boon, not just because they are excellent players, but because the roster really lacked in veteran experience. UCLA was likely going to have to look to the portal to add some experienced veterans because the team was otherwise filled with players with only a year total under their belts, with Bessoir as the defacto veteran despite only playing two years. The duo’s return allows the younger players to continue to develop at their own pace while instantly raising the ceiling on what this team is capable of. Add in talented four-star post player Amanda Muse, the lone recruit in this class, along with the recently-announced Lauren Betts from Stanford (the 2022 #1 overall recruit and a center that UCLA could really utilize) and UCLA has the talent to compete not just for the Pac-12 Championship, but for a national championship as well.

Which is where we turn to coach Cori Close, and how we may finally be at an inflection point with the longtime bench boss. I’ll start by saying that UCLA does not have a history of success with the women’s basketball program like they do on the men’s side; the program won the AIAW Championship (the precursor to the NCAA Tournament) in 1978 with a team led by legend Ann Meyers, but has only made the NCAA Tournament 18 times in school history, with seven of those coming under Close. Close has also taken the program the furthest in the NCAA Tournament, and her recent stretch with five Sweet Sixteen and one Elite Eight appearances in eight years likely goes down as the most successful stretch for the program.

But you can also see some flaws in Coach Close’s program, especially when it comes to results relative to the talent being brought in. Close has done an excellent job of bringing in talent that allows UCLA to compete nationally, but the results have been lacking to some extent. UCLA has never won the conference under Close, which shouldn’t be too surprising considering Stanford still employs Tara VanDerveer, but Oregon, Oregon State, Utah, Arizona State, and UC Berkeley have also clinched at least a share of the regular season championship during Close’s UCLA tenure. The Bruins have also never won the conference tournament and have only made the finals twice under Close, while Southern Cal and Washington State have won the tournament. And this says nothing of the postseason success that Oregon and especially Arizona have found during the past decade, making a Final Four that has eluded the program.

More than that, a lot of criticism has been pointed at Coach Close for the tactical choices (or lack thereof) that she consistently makes in big games. I can’t in all honesty say that I watch enough of the women’s team to know if this is a chronic problem, but in the games I have watched there are always long stretches of play where the Bruins struggle to run any sort of offense. It’s very similar to something that happens with the men’s team under Cronin, except instead of it being a stylistic choice (Cronin loves to isolate weaker defenders and attack them in one-on-one situations) the women’s team does not seem to have a plan of attack and instead rotates the ball around the perimeter hoping something opens up. On another front, Close can often be slow to adjust in-game, and while her teams can often land the first punch, it takes them a bit to counter-punch when opponents make an adjustment, if the adjustment comes at all. The second South Carolina game this season particularly felt like a game-long situation where Close had no strategy for combatting the South Carolina adjustments that had been made since their previous meeting.

It all combines to make this coming season one of the more compelling ones for both the UCLA women’s basketball team and Coach Cori Close. With the additions and returns they have, they’ll be one of the favorites in the conference, and a likely preseason top 10 team. Again, this is rarefied air for the women’s program. But we are getting close to the point where the rubber has to start meeting the road on a results front. If UCLA could win the conference or make a Final Four run, that would go a long way towards assuaging many of the doubters the program still has.

I should note that I am not calling for Cori Close to be on the hot seat. Far from it. But I am going to pay way more attention to this UCLA squad than I have in past years. Here’s hoping that they rise to the occassion.

Go Bruins!

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