PHOENIX — Lauren Betts had 16 points and 11 rebounds, and her blocked shot with 18.1 seconds remaining helped UCLA avenge its only loss of the season on the biggest stage in a 51-44 victory over Texas in an NCAA Women’s Final Four semifinal on Friday.
Kiki Rice had 11 points and Gabriela Jaquez and Gianna Kneepkens added 10 apiece for the Bruins (36-1), who won their 30th straight and will play for their first NCAA title against fellow No. 1 seed South Carolina on Sunday.
“Quite frankly, we didn’t play to our best offensively,” UCLA coach Cori Close said. “I remember after the Iowa game when we won the Big Ten championship tournament, I told our team that you cannot fall in love with pretty offense and think that it’s going to be like this every game. I told them there’s going to be a game in the NCAA Tournament that you’re going to have to just grind it out and do it with your defense.”
Betts had her 14th double-double of the season and doubled her point total from the first meeting, when she had eight points and seven rebounds in a 76-65 loss to Texas in the Players Era tournament in Las Vegas on Nov. 26. She averages 17.2 points a game.
“This is something that we’ve all dreamt of being in the position,” Betts said. “We’re all very thankful. We expected to be here.”
Kyla Oldacre had 11 points and was the Longhorns’ only-double digit scorer on a night when Texas shot only 30.8% from the field.
Longhorns leading scorer Madison Booker (19.3 ppg) scored only six points due to 3-of-23 shooting from the field.
“Honestly, every shot I took I thought was going in,” Booker said. “I can’t pinpoint it. It was surprising I couldn’t get out of that funk.”
Betts put UCLA up 42-30 with 6:11 left, and her jumper with three minutes to go made the lead 47-37 before Texas closed.
The Longhorns scored seven straight points capped by Jordan Lee’s driving layup to make it 47-44 with 1:02 left before Betts blocked Booker’s driving layup in the waning seconds.
“The entire game, the coaches are just continuously telling me sprint back, sprint back, sprint back,” Betts said. “My job today was help in any way I can inside the paint. As soon as I saw her getting downhill, I’m like, all right, please block this, just don’t let her score. I was in a good position. I trust my work and my defense.”
Booker said she slipped on the play, adding, “That’s not what we wanted.”
Rice made four free throws around a Texas missed shot in the last 13.3 seconds for the final margin.
Rori Harmon had eight points, five assists, five rebounds and four steals for the Longhorns (35-4), who had won 12 in a row. Harmon shot 4 of 11 from the floor.
Booker made the first field goal of the game 37 seconds in and did not score again until her jumper with 5:48 left in the fourth cut the Bruins’ lead to 42-32.
The Longhorns had held their previous NCAA Tournament opponents to an average of 49.5 points per game and had outscored them by an average of 35.5 points.
Neither team shot well in a lethargic first half, which ended with UCLA leading 20-17. Texas was 8 of 32 from the field and the Bruins were 9 of 24.
Texas did not break 20 points until Oldacre made a layup with 5:54 remaining in the third quarter.
“I thought (UCLA) played very hard,” Texas coach Vic Schaefer said. “Aggressive. Played a lot like the way we like to play. In our locker room, we felt like we let one get away.
“This will haunt me until the day I die. We couldn’t make a shot tonight. We had plenty of good looks. It’s part of the cruelty that is the game sometimes.”
–Jack Magruder, Field Level Media
