UCLA looks to beat the South Carolina program that inspired it

PHOENIX— I need to confess, I did not imagine them.

Four years in the past, I listened to then-freshman Kiki Rice and coach Cori Close inform me that their UCLA ladies’s basketball program would sometime be like South Carolina’s.

I did not purchase it, however I admired their aspirational perspective 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 gained three NCAA titles — with a shot at 4, if she will be able to get her staff previous Rice, Close and their Bruins in the NCAA ladies’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 Connecticutrespectively, barometers for different applications that dream of ascending to such elite heights.

And would not you already know 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 stated 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 seemed like the precocious child at the occasion who goes round telling the adults that she’s going to be president sometime — or in Rice’s case, that her staff could be considered one of the high in the nation.

“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,” stated 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 critical.

They meant it.

Hold the follow-through: They did Item.

They spoke their discuss proper into existence, respectfully, reverently.

“This is what we all came here to do,” he stated 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, once they — then as the nation’s No. 15 staff — performed the top-ranked Gamecocks respectively in Columbia, dropping 74-64.

“It’s kind of full circle playing South Carolina in the national championship game,” stated Jaquez, who remembers that first assembly having to take care of Gamecocks star Aliyah Boston in entrance of a packed Colonial Life Arena.

“Yeah, crazy. And we played ’em again right in the Sweet 16.”

That season ended with one other loss to South Carolina59-43, in the Sweet 16.

The following season, the Bruins lost again in the Sweet 16this time in a 78-69 nailbiter towards Louisiana State.

And then, by the time UCLA and South Carolina accomplished their home-and-home set in 2024, UCLA was actually beginning to fulfill the prophecy it had laid out for itself.

The Bruins dismantled South Carolina 77-62 in a November sport at Pauley Pavilion, launching themselves on a path towards 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 stated 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 imagine to be the values ​​of what leads to profitable. And I actually emphasize what leads to it… profitable is a byproduct. We’ve simply tried to hold a progress mindset of it all and take a look at to let each state of affairs educate us.”

So there will be no rematch with the Huskies — the Gamecocks beat them 62-48 on Friday — but there will be another opportunity to test themselves against South Carolina, model program, paragon of hoop and the only team standing between them and a national championship.

“South Carolina has been, you know, one of the best programs in basketball for the past many years,” Rice said Friday. “A tone of respect to the program and the culture that Dawn has built over there.

“But I actually assume that the largest factor is simply gonna be like, ‘Look, that is the 2026 UCLA staff. This is the 2026 South Carolina staff.’ So nonetheless we want to put together for one another, nonetheless we want to match up, that’s what it’s going to take.”

I do not doubt it.