UCLA Women's Basketball vs. Southern Cal Game Thread
The Big Ten regular season championship is on the line in Pauley Pavilion.
It’s the big one, the game you’ve all been waiting for.
UCLA.
Southern Cal.
Under the Pauley Pavilion lights.
Pac-12 Big Ten Championship on the line.
The Bruins and Trojans have spent most of the year as two of the best teams in the country, with UCLA enjoying a long reign as the #1 team (and still sitting as the #1 overall seed in the NCAA Women’s Tournament according to the last bracket reveal) while Southern Cal has been nearly as good, grabbing a #1 seed of their own this week. Both teams have suffered only one loss in conference this year and have proven themselves to be head and shoulders better than the rest of the Big Ten conference, so it is only fitting they get to face off one last time before the conference tourney.
In the last meeting, the Trojans handed UCLA their first and only loss on the season at home, a 71-60 defeat that was close for most of the game until it very much was not. That game was the JuJu Watkins show, with the sophomore guard showing why she is such a transcendent player with a 38 point, 11 rebound, and eight block outing while only sitting for one minute. Watkins did not get much help from her teammates, who shot 24% from the field (and 2-9 from three) but that did not mean much when Watkins was such a force.
For Coach Cori Close, this game will come down to two factors. First: limit JuJu Watkins. It’s easier said than done - Watkins is truly that good that it is hard to imagine she won’t be able to get hers in this one - but the Bruins are going to need to slow her down a bit and not let her have one of her best performances of the season. I’m not sure what the plan will be here beyond perhaps throwing more double-teams at her and getting the ball out of her hands, but then again I am not paid a ton of money to coach high-level basketball.
The other factor will be figuring out a new plan of attack against Southern Cal. Everyone and their mother knows UCLA wants to feed the ball to Lauren Betts early and often, but JuJu Watkins presents a unique defensive issue in that she is strong enough and quick enough as a help defender to impact Betts, who finished with a meager (by her standards) 18 points on 5-13 shooting, with four turnovers. Once Southern Cal showed its hand defensively, UCLA never showed a counter, and that was their downfall. The one positive is that UCLA had to develop another option in the game immediately after, as Betts missed the game against Michigan State, but UCLA will need more in general to win this one. In particular, UCLA needs their guards to step up; Kiki Rice had most of her scoring at the free throw line as she was 4-10 from the field, but that was better than Londynn Jones (3-10) and Gabriela Jaquez (2-8). This would be a great time in particular for Rice to assert herself, and for some of the other Bruins to step up.
Maybe more than anything, this is an opportunity for Coach Close to quiet some doubters. Coach Close has assembled what is easily her best roster during her UCLA tenure, with a level of talent that is hard to match across the college basketball landscape. The problem is that when the two opposing teams can match up talent-wise, it is often a difference in tactics that can decide the game, and the first meeting was decidedly won by Southern Cal head coach Lindsay Gottlieb (no relation to the credit card fraudster, btw). Gottlieb crafted a strategy to neutralize Betts and Close had no answer, resulting in a Trojan victory. For the Bruins, getting better play would be beneficial, but it is the tactics that will decide this one, and Coach Close truly needs to rise to the occasion.
This is your UCLA Bruins vs Southern Cal game thread.
Go Bruins!
They've taken Betts completely out of the game.
I guess publishing 2 separate game threads on The Mighty Bruin wasn't enough to support the Lady Bruins to a victory... :-(
For a game that had so much on the line, it was such a huge disappointment. Nothing apparently improved for UCLA compared to the earlier contest at Galen Center (their performance was actually worse). Despite the hostile environment at Pauley, U$C came out with greater focus, tenacity, and swagger from the opening tip. They encountered a ton of foul trouble, but held together as a team and never let UCLA in the game. A lot of sloppy passing, initial tentativeness by Betts to attack the basket before being double- and triple-teamed, the overall poor shooting by everyone, and just too much JuJu made it a one-sided contest. For the Lady Bruins to suffer only 2 losses the entire year is quite an accomplishment, but when those 2 losses are to their crosstown rival, it says to me that they're the better coached team. On the positive side, assuming that both teams take care of their opponents during the conference tourney, Coach Close and the Lady Bruins will get another opportunity to redeem themselves in the B1G championship game.