UCLA Women’s Basketball: Lauren Betts and Kiki Rice Hired for First Post-College Jobs at Raising Cane's After Winning National Championship
Duo will trade baskets for Box Combos by serving customers at Raising Cane’s on Sunset and Highland.
Fresh off of leading UCLA to its first-ever NCAA Women’s Basketball National Championship, Lauren Betts and Kiki Rice are bringing the celebration to fans with a special Raising Cane’s “shift” in Hollywood.
Tomorrow, Betts and Rice will clock in for a celebratory “shift” at Raising Cane’s located at 6800 Sunset Blvd., serving customers Chicken Finger Meals from the front counter and Drive-Thru and sharing their championship energy with fans from 10 am to 11:15 am. Customers are encouraged to arrive early and plan to use rideshare, as parking will be limited. While this isn’t an official meet-and-greet, Raising Cane’s will select lucky customers in line to be served by Betts and Rice and they will help hype up the crowd during the celebration. Autographs will not be available.
Their “shift” marks a celebration of UCLA women’s basketball’s first NCAA title and it will turning that milestone moment into a fan-first experience at Raising Cane’s. On Sunday, the Bruins concluded an historic season which saw the team finish with a record of 37-1 season and it was capped by a dominant 79-51 win over South Carolina.
Throughout the season, Betts and Rice cemented themselves as two of the best players in the country and they are projected to be top picks in Monday’s WNBA Draft. Betts, the Final Four Most Outstanding Player, Big Ten Player of the Year and Defensive Player of the Year, anchored the Bruins with elite interior dominance, while Rice led with poise and playmaking as one of the nation’s top guards, powering the most complete championship run in UCLA women’s basketball history.
Here are all the details:
Championship “Shift” at Raising Cane’s
Who: Kiki Rice and Lauren Betts
When: 10:00 am to 11:15 am PT, Thursday, April 9, 2026
Where: Raising Cane’s, 6800 Sunset Blvd., Hollywood
Parking: Parking will not be available in the limited lot on-site, please find street parking or park in a nearby lot if you need to drive.
Go Bruins!
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Tamara, I fully understand your point. Unfortunately I don't agree with it.
I also knew Coach Wooden also. During my years at UCLA from 1971 to 1975, I worked at Powell Library. One of the tasks I was assigned to when I first start working there was to visit Coach Wooden once a week at his office next to the old Men's Gym. I would pick up his reading list of books and collect the books that he had read that week and return with his selected books. I won't bore you with the details, but I knew Coach Wooden probably as well as some of the players on the teams. We developed a friendship over those years, because like Coach Wooden, I was an avid reader, having grown up inside libraries. My mother was a librarian in the LA Public Library system and she often took me to work with her and I would sit and read and I read everything I could get my hands on.
Coach Wooden and I would often discuss the books we both read. He enjoyed his history books, both ancient and modern, biographies, philosophy, science, the great novels, and everything else. I even brought him science fiction books to see if he might enjoy them. It was not quite in his wheelhouse.
Coach Wooden would never judge a book by its cover.
In particular, I remember a very deep conversation we had about the book "Invisible Man" by Ralph Ellison. He had a very craftful way of cutting away at the peripheral context and finding the core message of the author or the lesson of events or the symbolism of thought. He was an English major at Purdue; I was an English major at UCLA and we both enjoyed the exploration of words and meaning. At the time, Invisible Man was a controversial book and was subjected to bans in public school libraries. I think Wooden enjoyed the book as he checked it out of Powell several times, probably to dig deeper into Ellison's quest for individual identity.
After Coach Wooden retired, I remained in contact with him by letter. He maintained an office on campus for awhile after retiring and I would visit him on occasion (usually when I was attending a game), but by then I had taken a job that required constant travel and our exchanges became less and less frequent.
I think Coach Wooden would displeased to know his many friends, players, and students who would come to his home and sit on his couch would be treated by media, fans, and on-lookers as if they touched by the hand of God. He considered himself to be an ordinary man who found success because he had a principled means of finding that success. If anything, he would hope that their successes came about because of their own individual determination and dedication to excellence and that it would be recognized that they paved their own way to success through their own unique effort.
Sure, Coach Close hung out with Coach Wooden and found success with this year's team. But in Wooden's retirement years, almost every UCLA coach sat on his couch. Farmer, Hazzard, Harrick, Lavin, Alford. I believe Larry Brown stayed away and did his own thing. But those who did chop it up with Coach Wooden did not find a lot of success, the exception being one Tyus Edney beeline to the hoop. Tyus probably sat on Coach Wooden's coach so that explains his rim run.
These guys tried their best, but their best was not good enough so perhaps sitting on Coach Wooden's coach is all that magical.
Coach Wooden certainly would not have the expectation that his living couch would spawn championship coaches. He would have said, if you want bad enough, go and get it, but have a principled approach and to accept failure as an opportunity to become better.
I most certainly think he would not view Cronin as a failure because Wooden would never judge a book by its cover. Nothing good ever comes from judging people without having personal insight. It's much the same as calling for JJ Redick's head on platter just because he dumped on 3 of his players quite publicly. People don't understand that the intensity level of mens basketball is like war and the court is a battlefield. Emotions flare up. It's part of the game.
I think Coach Wooden would understand that he could never have the success that he had in today's college basketball play for pay environment because players, especially in the mens' game, are playing for a bag of money and not for the coach. The women's game has not gotten to that point, yet... The womens team NIL money is fractional compared to what the men receive. The women play for each other because there's only a pittance of money to play for.
I believe it is incorrect to solely blame Cronin for the past 3 seasons when it is clear there is a lack of institutional control between the coach and the NIL collectives and that institutional responsibility belongs to the Athletic Director. Considering the coach is in charge of the recruiting but has no control over the NIL purse strings, the pay to play system is an unmanageable system that, at some point in time, will implode. The coach recruits a player based on fit in his system, he negotiates an amount of money agreeable to that player, yet his ability to obtain the funds for that player has to be agreed upon by a 3rd party, the NIL collective, who has the right of refusal to pay that negotiated amount of money.
Who can successfully run a company when the operating money is required to come from a 3rd party source that is 1) not company controlled and 2) funded by donations and corporate sponsors and 3) the timing and availability of these funds are very irregular as both donors and corporate sponsors come and go.
The intermediary or bridge between the coach and the NIL fund is Martin Jarmond. The recent failures of the basketball and football teams lie in the hands of Jarmond.
The entire Joey Aguilar and Nico Iamaleava fiasco which undermined DeShaun Foster's season before the season even started was entirely Martin Jarmond's fault. Joey Aguilar spent 4 months on campus with his new teammates, then had the rug pulled out from under him when somebody (certainly not Foster) decided Nico was the more marketable player.
The loss of Mara was entirely Jarmond's fault. Again, Dent was the shiny new thing and the most buzzworthy player in the portal. Dent probably was making $50-$100K at New Mexico, who decided to give him $3 million? Keep in mind, Cronin doesn't control the money. Someone needed to understand that the guys you want to keep on the team need to eat first before the new guy. That person should be Jarmond.
And how did Jarmond not know that James Washington's collective (Bruins for Lifetime Sentences) was fraudalently masquerading as a 501(3)C charity? Where's the vetting process? Where's the institutional controls? Who has the conn? Who is steering the ship?
Answer: It's the guy who tried to push the football games into Sofi Stadium without first reading the breach terms of the Rose Bowl contract.
And this is all contained within one year of quality work put forth by the AD.
I am not going to complain about any UCLA coach especially when it comes to player personnel or performance so long as Martin Jarmond is steering the Titanic.
I'm perfectly fine with Cronin. As I've said, the men need to kick ass and take names. There is no parallel with the women's game other than it's played with 2 hoops and a ball. And as someone who coached AAU level boys and girls teams, I can say this as a fact.
Saw Lauren, Kiki & Gabriella were on GMA today. Makes sense since all six seniors/grads are in NY for the WNBA draft today. Is it me or have our Lady Bruins been getting a lot more media attention than the Michigan men?