UCLA survives late surge from Texas to make first NCAA title game

PHOENIX — There would be no offensive showcase between UCLA and Texas on Friday night, a slog of a game that ended up as one of the lowest scoring in women’s Final Four history. The Bruins did just enough to give themselves a chance to win the first NCAA championship in the NCAA tournament era.

Behind Lauren Betts and a defensive performance that stifled Madison Booker and the Longhorns, UCLA held off a late Texas run and avenged its only loss of the season 51-44 in the semifinals, setting up a title game showdown against South Carolina on Sunday afternoon.

“All you can ask for is an opportunity to play your best basketball for a national championship,” UCLA coach Cori Close said.

UCLA, which has won 30 straight games since losing to Texas on Nov. 26, reached the title game for the first time in program history, though the Bruins did win the AIAW Large College championship in 1978. Ann Meyers Drysdale and several other players on the 1978 team were at the game, and Close made sure to acknowledge her and the precedent that group set.

For the Bruins, it felt a bit like redemption, not only because they fell to Texas 76-65 in November, but also because their Final Four showing last year as the No. 1 overall seed ended in an 85-51 blowout loss to UConn. UCLA coach Cori Close told reporters in the leadup to Friday’s game that she had done a “crappy job as a leader.” Players vowed to do better.

“Last year we took that loss really hard,” Betts said. “I think it made us think a lot about what we could have done better, not just in practice but as a team, leadership, being able to have tough conversations. I’m just really proud of the growth and the way that we’ve held such a high standard consistently this year.”

The Bruins advanced, but nothing about Friday’s victory was pretty. UCLA, which averages 85.1 points, had its fair share of issues scoring on the stifling Texas defense. UCLA had 23 turnovers, the most in a Final Four game since April 8, 2008, when Stanford had 24 against Tennessee.

But Texas fared worse and scored a season-low 44 points on just 30.8% shooting from the field, looking nothing like the team that had reeled off 12 straight wins after a loss to Vanderbilt in November in which coach Vic Schaefer questioned his team’s toughness. Booker, who averaged 19.3 points per game this season, had a season-low six points on 3-of-23 shooting.

“We couldn’t make a shot tonight, and that’s been my fear the last three days,” Schaefer said. “And this isn’t the place to air out our laundry, but we had more than one occasion where we might have a play called … and we just weren’t in the right place, people out of position. Sometimes these things happen on this stage and it’s not anybody’s fault.”

Schaefer added: “I have no idea why the good Lord picked tonight for us to not be able to make a shot. I think we feel like in our locker room, we let one get away. I think this one will haunt me as the coach for probably till the day I die.”

Close said she knew this game was going to come down to defense, but she never expected it to play out this way, apologizing to the fans “for the rugby match and 23 turnovers.” But she also told her team after beating Iowa 96-45 in the Big Ten title game, “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,” Close said. “This was the game we needed that. But the reality is, it’s really all about toughness at this point and finding a way to make a winning play, even if it’s a winning play you wouldn’t have predicted or chosen.”

Texas could not hit an open shot for long stretches, and Booker struggled. After making her first shot of the game, she missed 17 straight, the longest drought by any player in Final Four history. It was a stark contrast to their win over the Bruins in November, when Booker had 16 points and Rori Harmon had 26.

In that game, Betts scored only eight points. She was determined to change that in Friday’s rematch, and in a game in which points were at a premium, she did enough to assert her presence in the paint to be a difference-maker. Betts led UCLA with 16 points on 7-of-10 shooting and had 11 rebounds.

Given the scoring issues for both teams, the game stayed tight through the first three quarters. UCLA led 31-28 leaded into the fourth, but a 7-0 run broke the game open, keyed by a 3-pointer from Kiki Rice at the 9:04 mark and then a layup by Gabriela Jaquez to give the Bruins a double-digit lead.

UCLA led by 13 points with 4:36 to play, but Texas whittled that lead down to 47-44 with 55.8 seconds remaining, as its defensive intensity forced UCLA to turn the ball over and miss shots. Following a missed jumper by Angela Dugalic with 30 seconds left, Booker went for a layup, but Betts blocked the shot with 20 seconds remaining. Rice made two free throws with 13.3 seconds remaining to seal the victory.

“The entire game the coaches are just continuously telling me sprint back, sprint back, sprint back,” Betts said. “As soon as I saw [Booker] getting downhill, I’m like, all right, please block this, just don’t let her score.”

UCLA set the defensive tone early in the game, contesting nearly every shot and holding Texas to just six first-quarter points — tied for the second-fewest points in a quarter in the Final Four since quarters were adopted in 2016. But in the second quarter, the Bruins scored just six points themselves.

It all added up to becoming just the third time in Final Four history that the teams combined for fewer than 100 points in a game.

But what does that matter when you are standing on the verge of school history?

“This is what we all came here to do,” Jaquez said. “Just super proud of us to get us to the chance to have another opportunity to play for a national championship.”

ESPN’s Michael Voepel contributed to this report.