UCLAs Cori Close is ready for her national

PHOENIX — If Dawn Staley and South Carolina beat UCLA in the national title sport Sunday, she would change into the fourth coach to win 4 championships.

UCLA coach Cori Close is wanting for her first.

After 15 years of building the Bruins to a program that might get to the Final Four, and a yr later, the NCAA championship sport, the 52-year-old finds herself in the dialog with some of the sport’s legends.

Staley is one of those who believes Close belongs.

“Cori is a connector,” Staley said Saturday. “She connects with her players, she connects with the community, she connects with powerful women that can help her as well as her players. She uses her voice. I think she’s very in tune with the state of our game. Very in tune. She doesn’t mind sharing. That’s the key. You’ve got to be able to share what you know in order for our game to grow.

“I do think she’s a spokesperson for our game and she’s one that really has used her voice for the advancement of our sport.”

At a Final Four with Staley, 12-time national champion Geno Auriemma of Connecticut and Vic Shaefer of Texas, who has been to 4 Final Fours, Close often was excluded from the dialog about the star coaches. For years she’s been labeled by critics as a better motivator than a tactical strategist you rely in crunch time.

But right here she is with the best UCLA workforce ever in the NCAA title sport for the first time, going head-to-head with Staley.

After last yr’s “embarrassment” in the Final Four, Close took an alternative to study from the errors that led to a blowout loss to UConn.

“Talking transparently, I did a crappy job as a leader,” Close said. “The moment we touched down, I was in the transfer portal. Not a great situation. One of my biggest regrets of last spring is that I didn’t celebrate them enough. I didn’t find ways to go, ‘This team was the most successful team since 1978-79.’ I let myself get wrapped up in everything that was transpiring in the portal. I don’t think I did a good enough job in that way.”

Going into Sunday’s championship sport, Close has a veteran group, with no starter youthful than 22 and a management group of six gamers slated to exhaust their eligibility and seemingly head to the WNBA.

All those gamers besides Gianna Kneepkens have been with the squad last season to see firsthand what went incorrect. Charlisse Leger-Walker, a switch from Washington State, spent the yr on the sideline recovering from an anterior cruciate ligament injury.

Leger-Walker opened this season as the place to begin guard and has seen a change in Close since last season’s Final Four run.

“Cori has built a lot of trust with this group, and it shows in the way that she stays so composed,” Leger-Walker said. “We’ve had a lot of conversations with her in the past that if she’s anxious and very high emotionally, then that transfers into us, and she is constantly seeking our feedback. What can she do to be better for us? And that’s something that you don’t always get in head coaches. So I’m really proud of her and her willingness to be open to us.”

In the locker room, gamers praised Close for opening up to the veteran group for enter.

“I’ve seen her grow every single year, and I think that’s just a testament to her work and to us as well, just being able to have that open communication between a coach and players,” sixth-year ahead Angela Dugalic said. “A lot of the time it’s just like, whatever the coach says, that’s what we do. Or sometimes players just do whatever they want. I think there’s a good balance of Cori listening to us and us listening to Cori.”

UCLA coach Cori Close reacts during the Bruins’ win over Minnesota in the Sweet 16.

(Eric Thayer/Los Angeles Times)

Senior Gabriela Jaquez, who has performed all 4 of her school seasons at UCLA, shared a comparable perspective about how Close has discovered to lean on her gamers.

“She has improved every year and really listens to her players,” Jaquez said, which makes Close “really rare as a coach.”

Close said at the start of the event she had to apologize to a participant because she “really screwed up.” She didn’t specify what mistake she made but said her apology was a key step in persevering with to construct trust with this workforce.

“That’s how you grow as a leader, how you earn credibility with your players, if you don’t think you have it all together all the time,” she said. “I think when you’re able to do that, you actually experience the most growth. So it’s never fun in the moment. It sure wasn’t fun to be exposed in some of the ways that we were exposed, and I’m ultimately responsible. But I am thankful for the growth that has stemmed from that.”

Close had to construct her best UCLA workforce and pull off her best teaching efficiency to get to this level. Now she faces off with Staley, maybe the best coach of this period who just walloped Auriemma and the Huskies on the national stage.

Once again, Close’s work is cut out for her. This time, those around her really feel she is ready to leap into the top coaches dialog.

“I have a responsibility to make strategic changes that reflect that I really heard those things or saw those things,” she said. “There’s tactical things. There’s leadership things. There’s how we structured our practices, things that we needed to address. So I just hope that every year, we do that.”