UCLA Women's Basketball 2025 Post-Mortem: Ceiling Smashed, New Ceiling Established

Read on for a discussion of Lauren Betts (obviously), a closer look at UCLA's improvements, and a look to the future.

Kiki Rice (Photo credit: Caren Nicdao/uclabruins.com)

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At the time I am writing this article, the UCLA women’s basketball offseason feels more or less over. The biggest domino I was waiting for, the commitment of Gianna Kneepkens, became official on Thursday, so now I feel comfortable talking about what happened this season and what the outlook for next year looks like.

Like with the men’s team post-mortems, this is not going to be a chronological recounting of what happened during the season, but rather a big-picture overview of some of the major storylines that took place this season, starting with the most obvious one:

A New High Point in the Modern Era

Let’s establish one fact: this was not the most accomplished UCLA women’s basketball team in history; that honor still belongs to the 1978 team, which won the AIWA Tournament and, thus, the only national championship in program history. But in the modern era, which I am considering from the point the NCAA started sanctioning championships in women’s sports on, this is UCLA’s most successful team. UCLA had only made the Elite Eight in the NCAA Tournament twice prior to this year (1999 and 2018) and had only won one conference tournament prior to this year in 2006. They were ranked #1 in the AP Poll for the first time in program history, and not only secured UCLA’s first-ever #1 seed in the NCAA Tournament, but also their first #1 overall seed.

Much of that had to do with a team built to be a regular-season juggernaut. I don’t mean this as a slight against them; rather, UCLA’s depth and talent were such that they could get their star players adequate rest throughout the season, which generally allowed them to be fresher in key matchups. This was especially true in the third game with Southern Cal for the Big Ten Tournament Championship, as the Bruins were well-rested heading into their third game in three days while the Trojans were tired after being in battles for their first two contests.

Also, to that end, the Bruins had Lauren Betts. I don’t mean that as a disparaging remark to the other players, but you can’t teach size, and for the vast majority of the regular season and even the NCAA Tournament, UCLA routinely faced opponents that had no real answer to Betts and what she could do in the paint, and that gave the Bruins a decided advantage heading into most matchups. Betts had an All-American season and was the engine that drove the team night in and night out, but the flip side to having such a dominant player is that the Bruins rarely faced adversity and never developed a second option if an opponent could neutralize Betts. This came to the forefront against Southern Cal during the regular season, and it happened again against UConn.

But I think that gets into the biggest discussion regarding what this season means going forward. We’re hyper-focusing on a few games rather than the entirety of the season because Coach Cori Close has UCLA at a place where the success of their season revolves around a few games rather than every single game. We’re not sitting here talking about how the Bruins did against Michigan State and Rutgers and Illinois, and the like, because UCLA was able to show they were a clear class above them. Even during the NCAA Tournament, I sat courtside and never felt that UCLA was in danger of losing their first few games.

For at least the near future, UCLA is now an elite program, and the way we talk about them will naturally change. Credit should go to the staff for continuing to grind to get to this point, but there now needs to be an understanding that how we view this team will shift going forward. The focus will no longer be on whether UCLA wins a game but on how they win the game, what can be taken from a game against an inferior opponent, and whether the team is prepared enough for the few major games on the schedule.

Is that unfair? Perhaps. But that’s the price you pay for this level of success.

Whole Team Improvement? Or Just More Betts?

This was a question I had throughout the season, as UCLA came into this season needing to replace the production of Charisma Osborne. I love Osborne a ton and appreciate what she meant for the program, but at the same time it always felt like Osborne was a bit of an inhibitor on the success of the team than she was a helper. She was an excellent defender, to be sure, but she was often pretty inefficient on offense and seemed to be on a different page than her teammates.

The meanest way to put things is that this UCLA team was better because they did not have Osborne. In her absence, there was a complete top-down understanding of what the plan was on the offensive end: get the ball to Lauren Betts. Betts averaged almost four more shots per game and 1.5 assists more this year compared to the previous season, and you could see from the first game of the season that there was a more concerted effort to make sure Betts touched the ball on almost every possession. That focus on Betts also led to more unselfish play from the rest of the roster; UCLA had 747 total assists this season compared to 601 the year before. And the trickle-down of those actions led to quality shooting performances up and down the roster; Kiki Rice, Gabriela Jaquez, and Angela Dugelic all enjoyed improved shooting performances this season. The one outlier in the starting group was Londynn Jones, but we’ll talk about her later.

That said, I don’t know if I can put this down as a complete team improvement, simply because it felt more like the Bruins got really good at a particular style of play and did not develop as well-rounded a game as they could have. Elite teams have multiple ways in which they can beat you, as UConn showed off during their championship run; some days, Paige Bueckers rains down shots from all over the court, while other days it might be Azzi Fudd running a beautiful pick-and-roll or Sarah Strong dominating on the wing. UCLA had a great Plan A in Betts, but when an opponent was able to neutralize her, or at least make the Bruins have to go to a Plan B, they tended to come up woefully short. We saw that in the Final Four game against UConn, and we saw that twice in the regular season against Southern Cal.

In general, the whole team got really good at playing through Betts, but as soon as that went away, UCLA had issues. Nothing stands out more in that regard than a stat that ESPN put up during the Elite Eight game against LSU, showing that UCLA was a ridiculous +320 with Betts on the floor compared to a -3 with her off the court up to that game. It was a common refrain throughout the season how things would bog down as soon as Lauren left the floor, which from a strategic standpoint does not make a ton of sense; for all of her strengths, Lauren’s weaknesses (no real handle, not an outside threat) should have meant that UCLA’s offense would become more free-flowing with a big that could draw their defender out of the paint, but instead the offense would often devolve into worthless passes around the perimeter before a poor shot was taken. For all the statistical improvements the team made this year, it became obvious that those improvements were because of Betts specifically and not because everyone else got better, which is a worrying sign if your goal for this team is an eventual national championship.

Next Steps for Betts

Ok, this is starting to get very Lauren Betts-centric, and I get it, but there is one last point I want to discuss regarding her before I shift to the rest of the team and next year.

When you watch Lauren Betts in person, you’re immediately struck by a few things. Her size, obviously, and how much taller she is than most players, but also her ability to absorb contact in the post and play physical. That’s a hard thing to teach any basketball player, and it would have been so much easier for someone with her talent level to devolve into a soft game that avoids contact, but Betts actively seeks it out.

But the more I watched her this season, the more I started thinking about what her future looks like in the moment, and I’m stuck with the belief that Betts as she currently is would struggle immensely at the WNBA level. Simply put, her game is too easy for an equally talented player to defend, and the WNBA has those in spades. Betts struggles going to her right hand, and is much more comfortable going left; more worrisome at the next level, she’s not an offensive threat outside of the post, and lacks some of the top-end athleticism that other bigs in the league possess. Defensively, she’s an elite post presence in college, but in the WNBA, she’ll be forced out to the perimeter more often (especially as she cannot sit in the paint like she can in college) and Richmond showed how that can be a problem for her.

I say all of this to show that this UCLA team has a much higher ceiling available to it, and it starts with Betts spending the offseason working on her game and developing more tools. She doesn’t have to become prime Jokic with the ball, but adding small things here and there would go a long way to improving her ability to stick at the next level while also improving things for the rest of the team. For example, I’m not expecting her to become a three-point specialist next season, but her free-throw stroke signifies that she can develop a midrange jumper of some kind, which would give her another offensive tool for when she’s forced out of the paint on post-ups while also freeing up the lane for cutters (Betts proved she is an adept passer in these situations). Or Betts can become more comfortable dribbling the ball and develops a face-up attack instead of constantly backing down opponents, which would provide another way to attack defenses. And defensively, I think she needs to either get quicker or work on her positioning more so that she doesn’t become a target for quicker guards.

Next Steps for Close?

I could sit here and discuss improvements for the other players on the roster, but at the end of the day the person in this program who needs to show the most growth next season is the one with the clipboard: Coach Cori Close.

My opinion of Close has not changed much after this past season. I think she is a tremendous human being, and having been in the room with her a bit this year I think would run through a wall for her. She understands how to connect with people in a way that few in this sport seem able to, and the comparisons between her and Coach Wooden, as hyperbolic as they can be at times, do have some merit. Stories like how she and the staff worked with Lauren Betts during her battle with depression only serve to highlight the kind of person Close is, and UCLA is lucky to have someone like her representing them.

From a basketball perspective, she’s not a particularly effective coach, and it only became more obvious this year.

I mentioned earlier how lost UCLA looked when Lauren Betts was off the floor, and a lot of that comes down to a simplistic offense that has one read (get the ball to Betts) and not much after that. The on-off numbers for Betts are staggering, but the eye test backed up those stats as the Bruins constantly devolved into mindless dribbling and contested shots as soon as Betts left the court. UCLA did not even try to run the same concepts with Barker or Dugalic filling in on the interior, which was an interesting choice to say the least. And when a team could match up with Betts on the interior (Southern Cal, UConn), UCLA rarely, if ever, had an answer, which is why most of those games ended in blowouts.

The defensive end similarly had schematic issues, seemingly because there were two overarching concepts:

1. Funnel everything into Lauren Betts and let her act as a deterrent on the inside.

2. Play hard and physical, and it is ok to get fouls because the team has depth and can weather having to sit non-Betts players fairly easily.

On the occasions that a team could force UCLA out of their comfort zone, specifically with a guard who could score at all levels (Juju Watkins, Paige Bueckers) and a big that could finish from multiple spots, you could see those seams split apart. It is hard to contain a Juju Watkins if your guards are not strong at the point of attack, and those players were able to create leverage against UCLA’s defense on seemingly every possession, forcing Betts into reacting and often making the correct decision on whether to finish on their own or give the ball up to a teammate for an easy finish. Similarly, the Richmond Spiders were able to find consistent offense against UCLA by running a five-out offense where every player on the court was a shooter, which forced Betts onto the perimeter and away from the paint, allowing for open looks both around the basket and from deep. UCLA won that game because Richmond had no answer of their own defensively for Betts, but we should not pretend those defensive issues didn’t exist.

All of which to say: Coach Close’s biggest struggle has been from a schematic standpoint. Far too often, Close ran simple offensive and defensive plans, which works against most teams because the Bruins had a decided talent advantage over their opponents, but came to the forefront in games against other elite teams that could match that talent. You might be thinking to yourself, “But Dimitri, you keep forgetting the South Carolina game, where UCLA ran another elite program off the court!” But I would argue that game in particular was more indicative of a young South Carolina team that was not up to the standards of recent years, and they were closer to the level of Illinois and Ohio State than the Gamecocks (and ESPN) would care to admit.

Part of the problem is character-related; to be more specific, Close is an extremely loyal person and has stood by her coaching staff despite some clear deficiencies. The main staff (Shannon LeBeauf, Tasha Brown, and Tony Newnan) have been together since 2018, with LeBeauf and Newnan having been with Close since 2011. Soh Matsuura has been with the program since 2018 as a video coordinator before being promoted to assistant coach in 2023, while the newest member, James Clark, is known as a development coach rather than an X’s and O’s guy. As a group, the coaching staff is great at development and building relationships with players and recruits, but there is a major gap when it comes to schematic knowledge; one of my favorite tidbits is that only Tony Newnan’s bio on the UCLA website has any discussion of developing an offensive or defensive system, while everyone else’s bio focuses on either development or scouting. That puts a lot of the onus for developing those systems on Close, which seems like a recipe for disaster, much in the same way Coach Cronin’s refusal to bring in an offensive-minded coach acts as an inhibitor to the team. It would behoove Close to bring in a more schematic-minded coach to her staff, but Close is too loyal to her current staff and is unlikely to make changes.

So what should happen? I think the biggest change Close could make is changing the way UCLA approaches the season. The Bruins are not going to be challenged by most of their opponents strictly from a talent perspective, so Close and the staff need to treat these games as live scrimmages in a way; use the games to drill home a concept against actual opponents, and continue to do so throughout the season. Offensively, this might involve playing Lauren Betts for limited minutes so the team can develop more chemistry with her off the court, or running sets where Betts is not the focal point so that other players can develop offensively. On defense, this might take the form of different defensive looks more often, like switching Betts onto a more agile wing to give her more practice in those scenarios while forcing the guards to play more disciplined on the perimeter.

And maybe the most crucial point is this: Cori Close has to improve to give UCLA a shot at a national title. This isn’t a new point from me - I’ve written some variation of that statement multiple times over the past few years - but it bears repeating after Close was thoroughly outcoached by Geno Auriemma in the Final Four. Look, it happens, and Geno is one of the best coaches in women’s basketball history, but on some level, the story of the Cori Close era feels written: UCLA is going to try and out-talent every other team because it has a schematic disadvantage otherwise. UCLA has not improved under Close because of an offensive scheme change, but because the talent has improved. Close didn’t win Coach of the Year this past season because of her defensive prowess; she won because she recruited Lauren Betts, and other teams didn’t. That’s simplistic, sure, but sometimes life is easily boiled down like that.

All In for 2026

If there is a theme to the offseason so far for UCLA, it is that the upcoming season is shaping up to be a Last Dance situation for the Bruins.

UCLA’s lineup this past year was extremely junior heavy, and they’ll now enter the 2025-2026 season with Lauren Betts, Kiki Rice, and Gabriela Jaquez all in their final year of eligibility. Angela Dugalic decided to return for her COVID year, which gives UCLA more continuity in the starting lineup, but another player who will be out of eligibility after this season. Londynn Jones, the last member of the typical starting lineup, is transferring to Southern Cal this season, but she’s likely doing so because Charlisse Leger-Walker is fully recovered from her ACL injury and will slide into a starting role. Throw in the incoming transfer of Gianna Kneepkens as a senior, and this is a veteran team in every sense of the word.

On its face, this UCLA team looks more improved than last year’s squad. Londynn Jones is transferring out in large part because she does not have a spot anymore; she was the lone rotation player who did not see a noticeable improvement this year, as she is a streaky shooter and went through a months-long slump in the second half of the season. Defensively, her size was always an issue, and while she was tenacious on that end, teams would routinely hunt her on offense, and her effort level could wane from moment to moment. Leger-Walker, meanwhile, gives UCLA another high-end talent on the outside who can run the offense and score at all three levels, while providing a size boost on defense that Jones simply could not. Kneepkens, similarly, is a much more consistent shooter who will get drafted for that reason alone, as she gives UCLA their best and most-consistent deep threat while being solid off the bounce. She needs a bit of work defensively, but UCLA will give her plenty of time to work on that end since Betts will be around to clean up any mistakes.

Of all the losses from this current team, the one that likely hurts the most next season is that of Janiah Barker. Barker went from a starter at Texas A&M to more of a supporting role this past year, but she flourished in Westwood, providing an athletic interior option that complemented other bigs like Dugalic and Timea Gardiner well while also being a strong defensive option against more athletic bigs. The Bruins are likely hoping that Lauren’s sister Sienna can fill some of that role; Sienna is not as tall as her sister but has a better handle and is a bit more athletic, so there’s a good chance the two Betts sisters would work well on the floor together.

I am dancing around the bigger issue, however. UCLA is set up well to compete for the national title in 2026. The following season? Yeah, that’ll be a complete rebuild.

I pointed out earlier that the vast majority of UCLA’s rotation for this coming season is in their final year of eligibility; of the players who saw major minutes this past season and should do so again the next year, only Timea Gardiner will be eligible beyond this upcoming season. That’s because the entirety of UCLA’s vaunted 2024 recruiting class entered the transfer portal after this past season. You can look at the transfers of Elina Aarnisalo, Kendall Dudley, Zania Socka-Nguemen, and Avary Cain as something UCLA can weather this coming year, but those players were expected to take over the reins of the program in 2026, and instead will do so for other teams. UCLA will have Sienna Betts and (theoretically) Lena Bilic holding over, but outside of those two and Gardiner, that will be it, as the rest of the team will feature entirely new faces by necessity.

This is one of the perils of having continuity in a championship contender, something Mick Cronin has been going through with the men’s team. If you have a core that is a championship contender, the natural inclination is to do whatever you can to keep that core intact and supplement it as much as possible so that you have as many cracks at the championship as possible. In Cronin’s case, that core made a Final Four run, and then spent two years trying to supplement it for a second run; their last run in the 2022-2023 season had the makings of a championship contender before injuries in the last few weeks derailed everything. But at the same time, the longer those players stick around, and as more veteran players are brought in to supplement them, it leaves the next generation looking for other options to get playing time.

Much like with Cronin, I cannot blame Coach Close for this situation, because banners fly forever, and if she can bring in a player like Kneepkens and get over that hump to win a championship, then UCLA fans will forgive her for some down years afterwards while the program resets. Had Cronin gotten a championship, or even another Final Four, I am certain most fans would have been content with the past few seasons. If Close wins one, she easily takes the top spot as the greatest UCLA women’s basketball coach in school history and enters into the pantheon of best coaches in school history, regardless of sport.

Immortality awaits, and UCLA is pushing all of its chips into the center. All they have left is to see how the cards land.

Go Bruins!

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