PHOENIX — I need to confess, I didn’t imagine them.
Four years in the past, I listened to then-freshman Kiki Rice and coach Cori Close inform me that their UCLA girls’s basketball program would sometime be like South Carolina’s.
I didn’t purchase it, however I admired their aspirational angle like I admired somebody who dreamed of visiting the moon.
At the time, the Gamecocks have been two-time nationwide champions. Now, after all, coach Dawn Staley’s groups have received three NCAA titles — with a shot at 4, if she will get her crew previous Rice, Close and their Bruins in the NCAA girls’s basketball championship sport on Sunday.
UCLA and South Carolina, the final groups standing in the 2025-26 season.
The greatest groups in the nation.
And moreover that, with their hard-fought Final Four victories Friday over Texas and Connecticut, respectively, barometers for different packages that dream of ascending to such elite heights.
And wouldn’t you realize it? It’s precisely as Close predicted in November 2022, when her Bruins have been off to a 7-0 begin with a nationally televised date towards the Gamecocks up subsequent.
“Both programs obviously hold themselves to very high standards,” Close mentioned then. “They are a little bit ahead of us, in the fact that they’ve won two national championships. But that’s where we want to be. We want to be that level of a program.”
At the time, Close gave the impression of the precocious child at the get together who goes round telling the adults that she’s going to be president sometime — or in Rice’s case, that her crew can be considered one of the prime in the nation.
UCLA gamers have a good time after defeating Texas in the Final Four on Friday to advance to the NCAA girls’s basketball nationwide championship sport.
(Ronaldo Bolanos/Los Angeles Times)
“We know we have the talent, the skill and we have the ability to execute and play at the level of a top-five team,” mentioned the level guard who had simply arrived in Westwood as the nation’s No. 2 recruit, behind Lauren Betts — who’d be part of her a season later.
You know the way we adults are inclined to reply to such unbridled optimism: With patronizing pats on the head. By mendacity encouragingly, “Sure, pal, you can do anything you want to!”
How cute.
Oh, however the Bruins have been being severe.
They meant it.
Hold the follow-through: They did it.
They talked their discuss proper into existence, respectfully, reverently.
“This is what we all came here to do,” mentioned Gabriela Jaquez on Friday, a couple of minutes after the Bruins eked out an oppressive 51-44 victory over Texas to march into the NCAA championship sport for the first time in program historical past.
Rice and Jaquez have been the solely members of the present Bruins juggernaut who started their faculty careers as a freshman at UCLA in 2022, after they — then as the nation’s No. 15 crew — performed the top-ranked Gamecocks respectably in Columbia, dropping 74-64.
“It’s kind of full circle playing South Carolina in the national championship game,” mentioned Jaquez, who remembers that first assembly having to take care of Gamecocks star Aliyah Boston in entrance of a packed Colonial Life Arena.
“Yeah, loopy. And we performed ‘em again right in the Sweet 16.”
That season ended with another loss to South Carolina, 59-43, in the Sweet 16.
The following season, the Bruins lost again in the Sweet 16, this time in a 78-69 nailbiter against Louisiana State.
And then, by the time UCLA and South Carolina completed their home-and-home set in 2024, UCLA was really starting to fulfill the prophecy it had laid out for itself.
The Bruins dismantled South Carolina 77-62 in a November game at Pauley Pavilion, launching themselves on a path toward the program’s first NCAA Final Four look final March, when their season ended with an 85-51 national semifinal loss to UConn.
“Just stacking those days,” Close mentioned after UCLA beat Duke in the Elite Eight final week. “What did that experience teach us? What got exposed there? How do we adjust, whether it’s roster construction, whether it’s skill development, whether it’s mentality, what point does every single thing teach us?
“It’s staying the course on what you believe to be the values of what leads to winning. And I really emphasize what leads to it … winning is a byproduct. We’ve just tried to keep a growth mindset of it all and try to let every situation teach us.”
So there will likely be no rematch with the Huskies — the Gamecocks beat them 62-48 on Friday — however there will likely be one other alternative to take a look at themselves towards South Carolina, mannequin program, paragon of hoop and the solely crew standing between them and a nationwide championship.
“South Carolina has been, you know, one of the best programs in basketball for the past many years,” Rice mentioned Friday. “A ton of respect to the program and the culture that Dawn has built over there.
“But I honestly think that the biggest thing is just gonna be like, ‘Look, this is the 2026 UCLA team. This is the 2026 South Carolina team.’ So however we need to prepare for each other, however we need to match up, that’s what it’s going to take.”
I don’t doubt it.
