Bruising Bruins dominate South Carolina, win an NCAA national title

It was dominating. It was overwhelming. It was powder-blue pummeling, eight-clap crushing, Westwood great.

It was the UCLA women’s basketball team needing barely two hours to finish the struggles of 45 years, a stunningly swarming triumph unmatched in even the best of Bruin athletic traditions.

Break out a brand new banner. Make room within the Pauley rafters. A brand new assortment of heroes is coming house, and so they began the occasion early.

For the primary time since 1978, and the primary time within the NCAA period, the UCLA girls are national basketball champions after a 79-51 finals blowout victory Sunday over favored powerhouse South Carolina.

“Oh my gosh,” mentioned weeping star Lauren Betts after the ultimate buzzer.

Oh my, Lauren. This was a heartfelt triumph for the towering event most excellent participant who overcame psychological well being points to grow to be the hardest determine on the ground.

“I do it for my teammates,” she mentioned throughout the celebration. “I don’t do it for me.”

Oh my, Gabby. This was a legendary triumph for Gabriela Jaquezwho scored 21 factors with 10 rebounds within the closing whereas his brother, former Bruins star Jaime Jaquez Jr.watched from the stands someday after he scored 32 factors for the Miami Heat.

“I imagined this moment, I imagined it so many times,” she mentioned. “Oh my gosh, I’m so happy.”

Oh my, Kiki Rice, Angela Dugalic, Gianna Kneepkens and Charlisse Leger-Walkerthis being a victory for the rarest of groups in school basketball — a gaggle led by six seniors and graduating college students who scored greater than 90% of the factors throughout the event and had been brazenly fueled by a need to play one more game together.

Oh my, Cori, this being a legacy triumph for coach Cori Close, a John Wooden disciple who led by means of considerate motivation as a substitute of senseless screaming. This was her fifteenth season because the Bruins’ boss, who beforehand made her the longest tenured coach and not using a national title.

“It’s truly indescribable,” she mentioned from the celebration stage afterward. “The loyalty, the steadfast spirit, the character that they’ve chosen day in and day out. … I am just so humbled that they’ve chosen to commit to our mission.”

One of Close’s mantras is “Sometimes you, sometimes me, always us.”

In Sunday’s finale, it was all the time all of them, a scrambling, scrapping bunch that stunned the three-time champion Gamecocks into submission within the third-biggest blowout in girls’s closing historical past.

This was UCLA’s first finals look within the NCAA period, and so they had been making an attempt to win their first title since Anne Meyers-Drysdale led the Bruins to an AIAW championship in 1978.

Yet they by no means blinked.

“This was a business trip for us,” mentioned Dugalic. “We had the mentality that the job’s not finished. Now the job is finished.”

Jaquez set the tone within the first quarter by following a Dugalic miss with a flying layup as she was despatched sprawling to the ground. She was fouled, transformed to a three-point play, and the Bruins had been rapidly sending a message.

They wouldn’t be intimidated. They would not be pushed round. And they’d play each second, as evidenced by the first-quarter, buzzer-beating trey by Rice as she tumbled backward to offer them a 21-10 lead.

The Bruins did not even panic when their chief appeared to panic, as Betts spent almost half of the primary quarter on the bench complaining that “I’ve got something stuck in my throat.”

UCLA coach Cori Close, heart, celebrates together with her gamers after guiding the Bruins to the NCAA girls’s basketball national championship on Sunday.

(Ronaldo Bolaños / Los Angeles Times)

Trainers checked her throat, gave her an inhaler and ultimately nursed her again on to the courtroom, the place she informed an ESPN interviewer that her throat was simply dry from the desert air.

The Bruins saved the warmth on throughout a second quarter through which they made errors, appeared to lose momentum, then collected themselves to keep up their big edge. At one level UCLA dedicated 4 consecutive turnovers and the Gamecocks closed the hole to 11, however then UCLA’s protection obtained robust once more and layups by Rice and Kneepkens helped them regain their benefit.

At halftime UCLA led 36-23 and the sport was basically over.

Jaquez put the bow on it when she hit a late three-pointer that made it 79-45, her shot adopted by a smile and a scream to the heavens.

Highlights from UCLA’s win over South Carolina within the NCAA girls’s basketball national championship recreation.

“Gabs is incredible,” mentioned Leger-Walker. “She is that person that you never doubt is going to give her all. She impacts the game in so many ways.”

Leger-Walker ended the afternoon dancing together with her teammates simply as they’ve danced all season.

“I’m still processing the fact that we are national champions,” she mentioned.

Believe it. These Bruins will probably be dancing eternally.

UCLA gamers have a good time after defeating South Carolina for the NCAA girls’s basketball championship.