Why the best UCLA womens basketball team ever

Absolutely, this is the best team in UCLA girls’s basketball historical past.

Not the best team in the nation this yr, but actually a testomony to teamwork and arduous work and expertise retention.

Whether UCLA wins it all this season or not, the Bruins are the envy of groups in every single place, including Oklahoma State, whose season they ended with an 87-68 second-round victory Monday. Afterward, UCLA’s six seniors joined their teammates in one last victory lap around the court, waving to followers, soaking in the adoration, on their approach to the Sweet 16 for the fourth consecutive season.

“Seeing a team who gets to host, a team who has stayed together, for the most part, they get to experience all the things that all of us want, and that is so incredibly rare and hard and special,” Oklahoma State coach Jacie Hoyt said.

But how a lot additional those issues will take these Bruins in the NCAA event after they fought off Oklahoma State?

Maybe all the approach, but possibly not.

The highway forward is treacherous. And the Bruins aren’t barreling toward it with the same momentum as the groups they’re possible to face. This deep UCLA team will need to dig even deeper.

They could have Lauren Betts, though, and no one else will. UCLA’s great 6-foot-7 middle and cheat code saved the day Monday, scoring 21 of her career-high 35 factors in the second half, when the Bruins acquired tight and the Cowgirls acquired nearer.

Not close, but nearer. Much nearer than UCLA’s fellow top seeds’ opponents did.

UConn beat ninth-seeded Syracuse 98-45 in a second-round sport that featured a killer 31-0 run by the defending champion Huskies.

South Carolina dismissed ninth-seeded USC, 101-61.

Texas blew out eighth-seeded Oregon like a candle, 100-58, on Sunday.

Even the second-seeded Louisiana State Tigers — possible UCLA’s Elite Eight date if both groups win their approach to a third consecutive NCAA event assembly — acquired in on the demolition derby Sunday. They routed seventh-seeded Texas Tech 101-47 while setting an NCAA document by scoring 100 factors in their Sixteenth sport this season.

But this will not be a event that takes into account level differential. So no hurt and no foul when it comes to the scores of the Bruins’ first two wins — and the first spherical against California Baptist turned into a rout, 96-43, after the Bruins woke up and outscored their company 52-9 in the second half.

What would possibly matter is that while UConn and South Carolina, Texas and LSU delivered their best spirit- and soul- and confidence-crushing blowouts, the Lancers and the Cowgirls left Pauley Pavilion feeling good about themselves.

The Sixteenth-seeded Lancers can tout that they trailed a top seed by just 10 at halftime. The eighth-seeded Cowgirls (24-10) can crow about outscoring the Bruins 42-41 in the second half.

“UCLA has lost one game all season, right? The majority of those wins were blowouts, like, real blowouts, and it would have been really easy for us to fold after that first quarter,” said Hoyt, referencing the fact that UCLA beat groups by an average of 28.9 factors per sport this season, fourth-best in the nation.

“But we never did. They were tough and had a resilience and a grit to them that I was really proud to coach.”

That the Bruins (33-1) couldn’t put more vital distance between themselves and a bodily Cowgirls team posed some questions about why changes didn’t come fast enough, UCLA coach Cori Close said, taking accountability for her half of that. She also noticed her gamers start to let calls and miscommunications frustrate them: “I didn’t think our next-play speed was as good as it has been, and it affects you,” she said.

That doesn’t inspire extra confidence in the Bruins’ path ahead. It’s a thorny gauntlet created by seeding guidelines that bar convention opponents from enjoying in the Elite Eight — and that might require UCLA, as the No. 2 total seed, to beat three of the top-five seeded groups if it’s going to win a national championship for the first time since the Bruins received the AIAW title in 1978.

Close hasn’t quibbled with her team’s seeding despite its spectacular 31-1 regular-season document against a loaded schedule. But she said Monday she doesn’t like the route that’s been drawn up for her team.

In Sacramento on Friday, the Bruins will play Minnesota, a acquainted foe from the Big Ten — one of a dozen convention groups that earned NCAA event bids — whom they defeated 76-58 on Jan. 14.

But after that, to attain the championship sport the No. 2 team in the nation might meet LSU (the fifth total seed in the event), adopted probably by Texas (No. 3 total). And then, of course, they’d possible meet No. 1, undefeated UConn in the last, where the Huskies could be making an attempt to win a second consecutive title.

An unenviable project, even for a team that appears to have it all.

“You know what does bother me?” Close said. “That the No. 1 and No. 2 overall seeds are not being rewarded because of a guideline that you can’t play a person in your conference in the regional finals. That is an antiquated, poor rule that advantages the wrong teams and the people who haven’t done the work.”

But on Monday, while saying a victorious goodbye to Pauley Pavilion, the Bruins had been still principally unbothered.

“I told ‘em in the locker room,” Close said, “we can talk about your wins and losses all day, but that will always pale in comparison to the way that you’ve affected this community, the way that you’ve touched people’s hearts, the way that you’ve grown as young women.”