LOS ANGELES — The UCLA women’s basketball team jumped up from its seats inside the Mo Ostin Center, tossing confetti in the air to celebrate after learning their fate on Selection Sunday.
The Bruins (31-1, 18-0 Big Ten) are the NCAA Tournament’s No. 2 overall seed and the No. 1 seed in the Sacramento 2 Regional and will host 16th-seeded California Baptist (23-10, 15-3) out of the Western Athletic Conference on Saturday in the first round at Pauley Pavilion.
The eight and nine seeds coming to face off in Westwood are Oklahoma State and Princeton, respectively. The winners of those two games will meet in the Round of 32 on Monday in Pauley Pavilion. The Sweet Sixteen and Elite Eight of this region will be played in Sacramento.
Cori Close and the Bruins have been here before. Kiki Rice and Gabriela Jaquez are used to this. For the fourth straight season, the UCLA women’s basketball team will host an NCAA Tournament regional in Pauley Pavilion.
While UCLA is no stranger to this occasion and has advanced out of its home regional in each of the last three seasons, the Bruins are trying to accomplish something this group has yet to achieve. They’re trying to avenge a blowout loss to UConn in the 2025 Final Four. They’re trying to capitalize on an incremental window as their six best players are all seniors.
So their sets are higher than this weekend, but they certainly can’t look past it.
“People have been asking me, ‘Do I care about the No. 1 overall seed?’ I really don’t,” Close said Sunday at UCLA’s Selection Sunday Watch Party. “We just care about the next matchup ahead of us, and so bottom line for us is that I just really want us to keep a present mindset. What’s the challenge in front of us? How do we play our best basketball for that, and earn another day?”
UCLA can’t change that the committee chose UConn as the No. 1 overall seed, but it can control its attitude for Saturday’s game, and each one after that. In relation to this, Close referenced a mantra assistant coach Tasha Brown constantly preaches. To tighten their circle around “who we’re with and what we allow to fill our minds.”
That’s what the Bruins learned from their loss in the Final Four in 2025.
“We all feel more prepared,” senior guard Kiki Rice said. “You do go off what happened last year, but then again, once we started the season, this is a new team, a new group, and having that mindset to take the lessons from last year, apply that, and let it benefit us to get better, but also, we can’t live in the past.”
That is the theme these Bruins are embodying. Here and now. In that present, they’re focusing on the five days they have to prepare for a Cal Baptist team that won six straight to end the season, including a pair of wins that ensured the WAC Tournament title and an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament.
