Tag: ucla-womens-basketball

LOS ANGELES – Gotta confess, I was rooting for Maryland.

Not to beat UCLA, no. But to keep it close, Sunday afternoon. To present some sort of a challenge. A little thrill.

I was hoping the No. 12 Terrapins might provide some semblance of suspense for the 8,721 fans who spent their afternoon at Pauley Pavilion, watching the No. 3 Bruins women’s basketball team wear down the guests in another successful yawner, 97-67.

The Bruins went into halftime with 10 turnovers and still had 47 points and a 12-point lead. The inevitable result was right on par with the 29.7-point differential UCLA was winning with entering play.

That’s why I was pulling for what was, on paper, UCLA’s most allegedly daunting Big Ten test to actually be a test – for UCLA’s own sake – and not another predictable outcome for which the Bruins came prepared with all the answers.

But Maryland wasn’t up for that. Now 17-3 this season, the Terps were no match for UCLA, which won its 11th consecutive to improve to 17-1, 7-0 in the Big Ten. The Bruins’ only loss was to No. 4 Texas – almost a favor, as a most-valuable early-season point of motivation.

Since then, though? The Bruins have been obliterating everyone they’ve faced. Because they’re that much better than everyone they’ve faced.

Talented and balanced. Selfless and in sync. Loaded with future WNBA draft picks. Bought in, locked in, laser-focused – fresh off a Final Four run and, with more experience and a couple significant upgrades, wanting better than for this season’s foray to stop again in the national semifinal.

UCLA is one of the nation’s top scoring teams (86.4) and one of its better defensive squads, too (56.7). The Bruins have the nation’s third-best assist-to-turnover ratio. They’re out-rebounding opponents by almost 16 boards per game, second-best nationally.

“This is another Final Four team,” Maryland coach Brenda Frese said. “With the opportunity to go win a national championship. They have been very intentional this year; they have the right chemistry. They’re gonna be right there. This is a national contender.”

The Bruins have arrived. Firmly among the upper crust of women’s basketball. Right there with perennial powers No. 1 Connecticut and No. 2 South Carolina, with regular contenders LSU and Texas, ranked Nos. 4 and 6 this past week.

It’s just that UConn, say, has decades of experience playing from the front. South Carolina and some of these other traditionally tip-top-tier teams have for years now dialed in a formula for staying in the moment while they annihilate opponents by 30 points or 35 or 38 or 44, as they are, while also playing for March.

This isn’t, however, regularly chartered territory for a UCLA program that’s steadily ascended to get here.

And the next time they face a foe that’s truly formidable, it will be in a game with supremely high stakes, probably deep into the NCAA Tournament. And so I worry about how the Bruins will stay sharp for when they run into their fellow buzzsaws.

Their conference isn’t helping. It might boast eight ranked teams, but as far as the Bruins are concerned, it’s the Big Ten in name only: There are 18 teams in the league, for starters, and compared to UCLA, this season they’re all too small, in basketball trash-talk parlance.

Across town, rival USC is young and floundering without star guard JuJu Watkins, out for the season recovering from a torn ACL. And any other conference opponent who was supposed to issue a challenge – ahem, Maryland – has failed.

So, yes, the Terrapins, with five freshmen in their rotation, will learn plenty from the loss: “When we face this again, we’re going to be more prepared for it,” senior guard Saylor Poffenbarger said. “This is only going to prepare [us] for the games in March that are really important.”

But what about the Bruins? Who’s preparing them? Or, who beside Close and her staff: “That,” she said, “is my largest responsibility this year.”

And, she said, “honestly, it’s exhausting. I have to just get myself ready [to get on them about] every little thing. I’m just on ’em, on ’em, on ’em! But I know that I can do that and do that consistently because I know what they really want.”

That’s to win a national championship, of course.

And if the Bruins aren’t going to get mettle-testing help from their opponents, if no one is going to force them to have to finish off a close game, they’re learning that preparation for those pressure-packed moments will have to come from within.

“It’s something we talk about every day,” said savvy senior point guard Charlisse Leger-Walker, who finished with 17 points, nine rebounds and eight assists Sunday.

“When you are part of such a great team, it can be easy to be complacent. It can be easy to come in and not fight for every possession, to not fight for your stance on defense when you’re just going through the motions.

“Our coaches do a really good job of holding the standard in that way, and also my teammates. We’re a veteran group, we have a lot of experience, a lot of leadership and when we feel like things are starting to slip in training, we have one through five people ready to say something about it.”

Maybe that’s what it will take, for them to be their own hardest critics – in practice, and at practice, which is what UCLA’s games have become: Reps for the real thing.