TAMPA, Fla. — Lauren Betts buried her face in a towel at the end of the UCLA bench. The Bruins center breathed deeply, lifted her head and wiped her tears.
She doesn’t want to go out like this.
“Coming back next year, I think I’m just going to continue to grow as a leader,” Betts said after UCLA’s historic season ended with an 85-51 loss to Connecticut in the national semifinal Friday, “and remind everybody what that standard is and show that with urgency every single day.”
UCLA broke ground with the program’s first NCAA Final Four appearance. The Bruins set a single-season program record with 34 wins. They claimed their first conference tournament title since 2006.
Yet the disappointment of the worst Final Four loss in NCAA tournament history has motivated them to push further toward UCLA’s first national championship since 1978.
“Really unusual to be in this position at the Final Four and have zero seniors in your locker room,” head coach Cori Close said, “and to have an opportunity to come back stronger, more connected, learning from this experience and be better the next time.”
Every player on UCLA’s roster has eligibility to return, including Betts, a draft-eligible junior who already expressed her desire to play with her younger sister Sienna. A stretch 6-foot-4 wing, Sienna is set to join the Bruins after being named the most valuable player of the McDonald’s All-American game this month.
“She’s a way better shooter than I am,” Lauren said. “To be honest, I feel like for her being younger, I think she is a little bit smarter than I am, too. She’s genuinely one of the smartest basketball players I’ve ever been around.”
The Bruins have also signed guard Lena Bilic to reach the NCAA scholarship limit of 15. Playing for Croatia’s ZKK Tresnjevka 2009 in the country’s top league, the 6-foot-3 guard averaged 15.4 points, six rebounds, 1.8 assists and 1.7 steals per game.
With Sienna’s addition, the Bruins have stockpiled talent at the four position, where Angela Dugalic, Timea Gardiner and Janiah Barker split time this season. Dugalic, a graduate student who has one year of eligibility remaining because of a knee injury in 2022, started 63 games in the last two seasons. She said she has not made a decision about her next steps, balancing a possible return with the WNBA draft and her Serbian national team obligations.
The logjam of athletic, sharp-shooting forwards places a higher emphasis on improved guard play after the Bruins’ backcourt turned the ball over seven times with just three assists against Connecticut. The biggest reinforcement might already be on UCLA’s sideline.
Graduate student Charlisse Leger-Walker is expected to play next season after redshirting while rehabbing a knee injury suffered in 2024. While sidelined, she became a respected motherly figure around the team because of her maturity and leadership. But when the former Washington State star returned to practice last month, she quickly reminded teammates of what a three-time All-Pac-12 honoree can still bring on the court.
“I just tell people Charlisse was definitely one of the best players I played against my freshman year and the entire season,” junior guard Kiki Rice said. “She’s so talented, has a really high IQ, does everything well on the court.”
Every day for more than a year, Rice wrote in her notebook that the Bruins would go to the Final Four. The experience was grander than she had imagined. Nearly 20,000 people packed Tampa’s Amalie Arena for the Final Four games. Back home in L.A., city monuments were lighted up in blue and gold to honor the Bruins.
It was the kind of support Rice dreamed of when she signed with UCLA.
So as the junior guard watched the final seconds tick off the clock Friday, Rice acknowledged the frustration of a bad performance and the sadness of a season’s end, but also felt the pride of a historic run. She still mustered a smile.
“I’m not going to forget the fact that we had such a great year,” Rice said. “To be in the Final Four, that’s what you dream of, and that’s what you work for. But I think obviously, we’re not done. We want to win a national championship.”
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