SACRAMENTO, Calif. — After trailing at halftime for simply the second time this season, No. 1 seed UCLA returned to the Elite Eight courtroom on Sunday trying like a brand new crew.
Overcoming a uncommon check from a tenacious Duke squad, the Bruins rallied for a 70-58 win to advance to the women’s Final Four. It was a turnaround sparked within the locker room at halftime, when the crew’s six graduating members addressed what led to their 39-31 deficit.
“Before [coach Cori Close] came in, I think we were just … able to call each other up and out on, like, what we have to fix,” UCLA ahead Angela Dugalic mentioned. “I think that’s a great quality of our team … no one takes it personally. If I need Lauren [Betts] to do something better, she’s willing to take accountability for that and vice versa. That goes for everyone on my team.”
Heading into Sunday’s matchup, UCLA had the higher hand as one of the vital balanced scoring assaults in Division I. But the third-seeded Blue Devils rapidly proved that their protection was up to the check, scoring 16 factors from 12 UCLA turnovers and placing fixed stress on Betts, the crew’s star senior. In the primary half, UCLA went 6-for-12 on performs with a Betts contact, together with seven turnovers. Without a Betts’ contact, UCLA went 8-for-13 for 17 factors with 4 turnovers.
At the tip of the primary half, Betts had eight factors, two rebounds, two assists and three blocks. For the Big Ten Player of the Year and Big Ten Defensive Player of the Year, she mentioned her first-half efficiency made her “pretty mad.”
“I just didn’t like how that first half happened. And I know that I could have been a lot more aggressive. I think going into a game like this, sometimes you just take yourself out of your head and you realize, ‘Oh, this is the Elite Eight and my season is on the line,'” Betts mentioned. “I’ve got to wake up a little bit.”
When Betts entered the locker room at halftime, she mentioned she felt a surge inside her that reminded her why she was there: “I wanted to win this game.” It took Betts and the opposite leaders on the crew, together with Dugalic and the 4 different graduating members, to have a look at each other and maintain themselves accountable.
Dugalic mentioned that after her teammates communicated with one another, Close got here to the locker room “super steady” and gave her crew a “sense of calm.”
“We understood that the first half wasn’t a good representation of how we want to play basketball,” Dugalic mentioned. “But Cori came in and what she said right now is, like, ‘How do we stick back to our values and stay neutral, focus on next-play speed?'”
According to Close, her crew’s struggles within the first half — the primary time they had been behind on the break since their solely loss, to Texas, in November — had been due to not executing the Bruins’ sport plan “very well.”
“We didn’t control rebounds. We weren’t the aggressors in creating catches. We didn’t go strong to the rim and execute our stuff,” Close mentioned. “Lots of things come into play. That’s why we focus on the response.”
Betts and her teammates returned to the courtroom with a “not going to lose” mentality, in accordance to the senior. For Betts, that meant doing no matter she wanted to do for her Bruins, from scoring to blocking photographs to getting further rebounds.
In the second half, Betts adopted by means of on her aims. The 6-foot-7 heart completed with 23 factors and 10 rebounds for her sixth profession double-double within the NCAA event. She grew to become the one participant with 20 factors, 10 rebounds and 5 blocks in a sport in a regional closing or later since Baylor‘s Brittney Griner within the 2012 nationwide championship sport, in accordance to ESPN Research.
Despite the Blue Devils discovering success early with their guard trio of Ashlon Jackson, Taina Mair and Riley Nelson, the Bruins had been in a position to buckle down defensively within the second half. Holding Duke with no basket for the ultimate six minutes of the third quarter, the Bruins capitalized on their power. The drought did not finish till Mair hit a 3-pointer 90 seconds into the fourth quarter that pulled Duke inside six factors — earlier than UCLA in the end pulled away.
“When they came out [after halftime], we just didn’t have a response to it,” Mair mentioned. “Credit to them for going into the locker room and making the correct changes to win the game. They played a great second half.”
In the third quarter, Bruins guard Gianna Kneepkens set the tone when she made a 3-point jumper with lower than three minutes left within the quarter. For the primary time since going up 2-0 on the sport’s preliminary basket, the Bruins took over the lead 47-45.
UCLA held the lead the complete fourth quarter and outscored Duke 39-19 within the second half. By the ultimate whistle, the six graduating members of the Bruins’ roster had completed with 66 of the crew’s 70 factors. (Betts’ sister, Sienna, a freshman, accounted for the 4 different factors.)
Lauren Betts mentioned her teammates’ means to flip issues round within the second half is proof of their crew’s normal and their connection to each other.
“We’ve had moments where we’ve had close games,” Betts mentioned. “I’m just so proud of the way that we’re able to just stay calm and still hold each other accountable while also just competing at the highest level. That’s just what makes this team so special. It’s definitely a group thing. It’s not just one person. I think every person in our leadership group has just done a really good job of just remaining [in] that steadiness.”
With their thirty fifth win this marketing campaign, essentially the most in a season in UCLA program historical past, the Bruins are chasing the college’s first women’s nationwide title. After falling to UConn in this system’s first Final Four look final season, Betts mentioned her crew has grown within the yr since and that moments like coming again at halftime within the Elite Eight will assist the Bruins obtain their final objective.
“We could have gone into that locker room and just kept our head down and gotten mad at each other and been pissed off,” Betts mentioned. “The ability to get on each other and still show up and play for each other and come out with that aggressive mentality … that’s the mentality that we have to continue to start with moving forward.”
