UCLA’s Cori Close is ready for her national championship moment

PHOENIX — If Dawn Staley and South Carolina beat UCLA on Sunday in the national title game, she would become the fourth coach to win four championships.

UCLA coach Cori Close looks for her first.

After 15 years of building a program that could take the Bruins to the Final Four, and a year later, to the NCAA championship game, the 52-year-old finds himself in conversation with some of the game’s legends.

Staley is among those who believe Close has a place.

“Cori is a connector,” Staley said Saturday. “She connects with her players, she connects with the community, she connects with powerful women who can help her and her players. She uses her voice. I think she’s very in tune with the state of our game. Very in tune. She doesn’t mind sharing. That’s the key. You have to be able to share what you know for our game to grow.

“I think she is a spokesperson for our sport and has really used her voice for the advancement of our sport.”

South Carolina coach Dawn Staley, left, believes UCLA coach Cori Close is a strong advocate for women’s basketball.

(Harry How/Getty Images; Sara Nevis/Associated Press)

In a Final Four run with Staley, 12-time national champion Geno Auriemma of Connecticut and Vic Shaefer of Texas, who has been to four Final Fours, Close was often left out of the star coaching conversation. For years, critics have called her a better motivator than a tactical strategist counted on in critical moments.

But here she was with the best UCLA team ever in the NCAA title game for the first time, facing Staley.

After last year’s “embarrassment” in the Final Four, Close took the opportunity to learn from the mistakes that led to a blowout loss to UConn.

“Speaking transparently, I have done a shoddy job as a leader,” Close said. “By the time we landed, I was in the transfer portal. It wasn’t a great situation. One of my biggest regrets from last spring was not celebrating them enough. I couldn’t find a way to say, ‘This team was the most successful team since 1978-79.’ I got caught up in everything that was happening in the portal. I don’t think I did a good enough job that way.

Heading into Sunday’s championship game, Close has a veteran group, with no starters under 22, and a leadership group of six players who are expected to exhaust their eligibility and will likely head to the WNBA.

All of these players, with the exception of Gianna Kneepkens, were with the team last season to see for themselves what went wrong. Washington State transfer Charlisse Leger-Walker spent the year on the sidelines recovering from an ACL injury.

Leger-Walker opened this season as the starting point guard and has seen a change in Close since last season’s Final Four.

“Cori has built a lot of trust with this group, and it shows in the way she stays so calm,” Leger-Walker said. “We’ve had a lot of conversations with her in the past. If she’s anxious and very strong emotionally, that carries over to us, and she’s constantly looking for our feedback. What can she do to be better for us? And that’s something you don’t always get in head coaches. So I’m really proud of her and her willingness to be open with us.”

In the locker room, players praised Close for being open to the veteran group.

“I’ve seen her grow every year, and I think it’s just a testament to her work and to us as well, just being able to have that open communication between a coach and players,” sixth-year forward Angela Dugalic said. “Most of the time it’s like whatever the coach says, that’s what we do. Or sometimes the players just do what they want. I think there’s a good balance between Cori listening to us and us listening to Cori.”

UCLA coach Cori Close reacts during the Bruins’ win over Minnesota in the Sweet 16.

(Eric Thayer/Los Angeles Times)

Senior Gabriela Jaquez, who played all four of her college seasons at UCLA, shared a similar perspective on how Close learned to lean on her players.

“She’s gotten better every year and really listens to her players,” Jaquez said, which makes Close “really rare as a coach.”

Close said early in the tournament that she had to apologize to a player because she “really messed up.” She didn’t say what mistake she made but said her apology was a key step in continuing to build trust with this team.

“That’s how you grow as a leader, how you gain credibility with your players, if you don’t think you have everything in hand all the time,” she said. “I think when you’re able to do that, you actually feel the most growth. So it’s never fun in the moment. It certainly wasn’t fun to be exposed in the same way that we were, and I’m ultimately responsible for that. But I’m grateful for the growth that came from it.”

Close had to put together his best team at UCLA and put together his greatest coaching performance to get to this point. Now she faces Staley, perhaps the best coach of this era, who just knocked Auriemma and the Huskies onto the national stage.

Once again, Close’s work is done for her. This time, those around her feel that she is ready to jump into the conversation of the best coaches.

“I have a responsibility to make strategic changes that reflect the fact that I actually heard or saw these things,” she said. “There’s tactical things. There’s leadership things. There’s the way we structured our practices, things we needed to address. So I hope every year we do that.”