UCLA's Six Seniors Scored Every Point in Historic Championship Run

The number that defines UCLA's first NCAA women's basketball championship is 130. That is how many points the Bruins scored across the entire Final Four, and not one of them came from anyone other than a senior or graduate student. On Easter Sunday in Phoenix, that arithmetic produced a 79-51 demolition of South Carolina at the Mortgage Matchup Center, a 28-point margin that ranks as the third-largest in Division I women's championship history.

Cori Close built her team through the transfer portal with the precision of an arbitrage trade. Four of her six key seniors arrived from other programs: Lauren Betts from Stanford, Charlisse Leger-Walker from Washington State, Gianna Kneepkens from Utah just one season ago, and Angela Dugalić from Oregon back in 2021. Only Gabriela Jaquez and Kiki Rice started their careers in Westwood. The result was a 37-1 season, an 18-0 Big Ten record, and a 31-game winning streak that ended in a trophy.

Jaquez led the championship game with 21 points, 10 rebounds, and five assists, joining Breanna Stewart, Chamique Holdsclaw, Dawn Staley, and Sarah Strong as the only five players in history to record that stat line in a title game. Betts, the 6'7" Stanford transfer and Big Ten Player of the Year, was named Final Four Most Outstanding Player after posting 16 points, 11 rebounds, and three blocks on 7-of-10 shooting. Her interior presence held South Carolina to 7-for-18 when she was the contested defender. All five starters finished in double figures; Kneepkens, who averaged 13.2 points per game this season while leading the team at 45.9% from three-point range, added 10. Rice set the game's tone early with a three-pointer just before the first-quarter buzzer that pushed UCLA's lead to 21-10.

The experience UCLA assembled through the portal represented a calculated bet that veteran players, motivated by unfinished business, could outperform younger competition. That calculation was powered by memory: in 2025, UCLA lost to UConn 85-51 in the Final Four, the largest margin ever in a national semifinal. Close told her team afterward: "We've got to let the pain of this, hopefully, teach us to go to new heights." Kneepkens was watching that game from Utah, weighing her own transfer decision. She chose to join a program fueled by that loss. Leger-Walker had even more personal stakes; she missed the 2025 Final Four entirely while still rehabilitating the knee injury she suffered in January 2024, making this title her first experience on the Final Four floor.

UConn coach Geno Auriemma described the broader forces that made UCLA's approach possible: "The portal and the revenue share, I think that was the death of the mid-majors... When your choice is go get a high school senior or go get a college sophomore for your team, a lot of coaches are deciding that getting a college sophomore is way better." South Carolina's Dawn Staley, coaching the three-time defending champion on the losing end, offered a concise acknowledgment: "UCLA is a quality team with very experienced players who got a taste of being in the Final Four last year, and you make adjustments."

Close, in her 15th season at UCLA and now 358-144 overall, called the moment "immeasurably more than I could ask or imagine." The program last held a championship trophy in 1978, when it won the AIAW title, nearly 48 years before Sunday's net-cutting in Phoenix.

The blueprint won't survive its own success. With all six seniors exhausting eligibility, Close expects to add approximately five transfer portal additions next season. Sienna Betts, Lauren's sister, is the primary returning contributor. All six seniors, Betts, Jaquez, Rice, Leger-Walker, Kneepkens, and Dugalić, are expected to hear their names called at the WNBA Draft on April 13. The roster that made history is already dissolving. What remains is proof that in the portal era, experience is a commodity, and UCLA, for one extraordinary season, bought every share it could find.