With a dominant performance on both sides of the court, including 46 rebounds and 19 steals, the UCLA women’s basketball team beat Cal Poly 115-28 on Tuesday at Pauley Pavilion.
The UCLA (10-1) defense held the Mustangs (2-8) to three points in the second quarter and forced 31 turnovers and single digit scoring in the last three quarters. The Bruins scored 59 points off turnovers. Senior Lauren Betts earned her third double-double of the season with 20 points and 10 rebounds.
Freshman Sienna Betts, the No. 2 recruit from the 2025 class, played her first minutes with the Bruins, sharing the court with her sister for the first time for UCLA. She scored her first field goal in the fourth to give the Bruins their first 100-point game since December 2024 against Long Beach State, which they will face on Sunday.
Sienna earned her first assist in the first quarter with a pass to, who else but, Lauren as she was driving to the basket. Sienna grabbed her first points in her collegiate career off the free-throw line and finished the game with five points and two assists while playing under restricted minutes after missing the first part of the season with a leg injury.
The No. 4 Bruins closed the second quarter with 27 unanswered points, punctuated by a three-pointer by Angela Dugalić at the buzzer.
The Bruins finished the game with five players scoring in double digits. By the end of the third quarter, UCLA held a 70-point lead.
It was déjà vu for the Mustangs, who lost to the Bruins, 69-37, exactly a year ago. Cal Poly was without leading scorer Vanessa McManus.
BERKELEY, Calif. — Mike White, who had a successful career as a college coach with California and Illinois and later coached the NFL’s Oakland Raiders, has died. He was 89.
Cal said White’s family confirmed that he died Sunday in Newport Beach.
White helped the Golden Bears win a share of the Pac-8 title in 1975, led the Illini to their first Rose Bowl in 20 years in the 1983 season and coached the Raiders in their first two seasons back in Oakland in 1995-96 after leaving Los Angeles.
He also worked as an assistant for the San Francisco 49ers and was on Dick Vermeil’s staff with the St. Louis Rams when they won the Super Bowl following the 1999 season.
“Mike was special,” said Burl Toler Jr., a linebacker who played at Cal under White from 1974-77. “He treated us like men and with a lot of respect. Mike was a very gifted and smart coach who loved Cal and loved being a coach, and he surrounded himself with a lot of like minds who instilled in us a will to succeed.”
White was a four-sport student-athlete at Cal in the 1950s and spent time as an assistant with the Bears and at rival Stanford before getting the head coaching job at his alma mater in 1972.
White had a 35-30-1 record in six seasons at Cal, with his biggest success coming in 1975 when he was named coach of the year after the Bears finished tied with UCLA for first place in the conference. Cal finished 14th in the nation with an offense that featured Chuck Muncie and quarterback Joe Roth.
White also coached quarterback Steve Bartkowski earlier at Cal and helped develop him into the No. 1 overall pick in the 1975 NFL draft.
He then left for the NFL, spending two seasons as an offensive line coach for the 49ers, before returning to college in 1980 with Illinois. He led the Illini to a 47-41-3 record with three bowl trips, including a loss in the 1984 Rose Bowl to UCLA.
That 1983 Illinois team went 9-0 in the Big Ten and is the only team in conference history to beat every other conference opponent in the same season.
White then returned to the NFL in 1990, spending five seasons as an assistant with the Raiders before taking over as head coach. He had a 15-17 record before getting fired after the 1996 season.
He spoke of the importance of athletics to the institution, of the way they bring people together and showcase excellence.
The remarks weren’t nearly as remarkable as the person doing the speaking.
UCLA chancellor Julio Frenk.
In recent years, the school’s chancellors had distanced themselves from athletics as if they were a distasteful part of the job. Gene Block would show up at the occasional football or basketball game but never granted interview requests or spoke at coaches’ introductions. He did once attach his name to a statement that misspelled the last name of newly hired football coach Rick Neuheisel.
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It’s believed that the last UCLA chancellor to speak at a coach’s introduction was Albert Carnesale in 2003 upon the hiring of Karl Dorrell.
All of which makes Frenk’s appearance, not to mention his speaking for nearly five minutes Tuesday inside a Luskin Center ballroom, all the more extraordinary. Frenk was there to welcome Bob Chesney, the new football coach who has quickly galvanized a long-suffering fan base with his passion and willingness to immediately poke rival USC by proclaiming that UCLA would soon become “the school in town.”
Frenk had UCLA fans at hello.
What he said next was even more encouraging.
“Athletics are the front porch of the university, one of the most visible signals of what we stand for,” Frenk said. “Athletics connect us across generations and geographies with students and alumni, friends as well as strangers. These things are extremely important and help build community and all of that is coming true at UCLA.”
There was also a reference to one word — alignment — that athletic director Martin Jarmond and Chesney would later echo in their remarks.
“Winning in college football requires a unified approach across all of the university — university leadership and athletics are aligned and committed to doing the right things to build a winning program,” Frenk said.
Jarmond suggested that Frenk was willing to help in a way that his predecessor was not — a slightly curious idea given Block’s willingness to support the move to the Big Ten Conference and approve Jarmond’s contract extension, but it seemed that Jarmond’s larger point was about increased institutional support for the football program under the new chancellor.
“What I’m excited and really enthused about,” Jarmond said, “is we have alignment in a way that we have not had in the past. We have a great chancellor in Chancellor Frenk that understands the importance of athletics, bringing communities together, engaging alumni, wanting our student-athletes to be successful and understanding the commitment it takes at the university level for a football program to be competitive. We have investment now, and we have leadership and vision. I don’t always feel we’ve had all of those together.”
Without question, Frenk’s early visibility has already set a new, welcome tone from inside Murphy Hall.
His comments were heartening for anyone who cares about UCLA athletics because they show he’s not only paying attention but also willing to do his part — one that’s essential — to support the operation.
Suggestion box
Mick Cronin
(Jessie Alcheh / Associated Press)
It probably shouldn’t take a public-records request to find out that a high-profile UCLA coach — who at the time was the state of California’s second-highest paid public employee behind since-fired Cal football coach Justin Wilcox — received a new contract seven months earlier.
But that’s the reality of the situation after a Times records request led to the disclosure of Mick Cronin’s new deal that will pay the Bruins men’s basketball coach $4.5 million a year as part of a contract running through the end of the 2029-30 season.
The reasoning given for the lack of disclosure was the fiscal situation facing the school at the time, including the prospect of federal funding cuts.
Appearances are important, yes. But so are integrity and transparency.
This is the second time in the last two years that UCLA has signed one of its biggest figures inside the athletic department to a new deal while staying mum. Jarmond’s contract extension was signed in the spring of 2024 and not announced until the following November — after the football team had won three consecutive games, alleviating a significant amount of pressure that Jarmond was facing for the hiring of football coach DeShaun Foster.
The bottom line is this: UCLA is a public institution that should pride itself on accountability, and if you aren’t willing to openly divulge any significant move that you make, then maybe you shouldn’t be making it.
Chesney moves
While the transfer portal doesn’t open until Jan. 2, Chesney provided some early insight into his possible approach in rebuilding his first UCLA roster.
Upon his arrival at James Madison, Chesney said he had a center, guard and a punter come back from the previous team and added roughly 60 players in the transfer portal to help the Dukes win their first bowl game in the history of the school. The next year, the Dukes added about 50 players through the transfer portal and made the College Football Playoff.
What might that mean for his work with the Bruins?
“That will have to be determined by our team when we get that fully assembled and moving forward next year,” Chesney said. “But then whatever our expectations are is where we build our standards and then the day-to-day process. But I see zero reason why, you know, we cannot be competing, cannot be competing for a championship.”
Chesney has begun to assemble his staff, reportedly agreeing to bring James Madison offensive coordinator Dean Kennedy with him and hiring Florida State general manager Darrick Yray in an identical post with the Bruins as part of his efforts to bring in staffers with West Coast ties.
Yray had spent seven seasons in a variety of roles at Oregon State, rising to the role of director of player personnel. Before that, Yray had worked for four seasons as an offensive assistant and three as assistant director of football operations at Fresno State, his alma mater.
Basketball blues?
Cronin’s teams usually get better over the course of the season, even in down years. So it would be folly to foretell of a lost season for the Bruins in mid-December.
But the big question facing UCLA (7-3) at this pivotal point is whether this season has any upside beyond being a bubble team that loses in the first or second round of the NCAA tournament.
As currently constructed, UCLA has so many issues that it’s hard to imagine a different outcome.
A tentative Donovan Dent has not been much of an upgrade over a tentative Dylan Andrews at point guard. Eric Dailey Jr. takes too many jumpers while drifting in and out of games. Tyler Bilodeau can really score but continues to be somewhat limited defensively despite his best efforts. The thought of what the departed Aday Mara and William Kyle III aren’t doing for this team in the post haunts Bruins fans on a daily basis.
What’s far more worrisome is that the talent level isn’t elite — can you really foresee anyone on this roster forging a long NBA career? — and a coach known for defense doesn’t have enough athletic, relentless players to construct a good defense.
Local high school recruiting has all but dried up and Cronin made another reference to needing more money to bring in players after donors shelled out a massive amount last spring to land Dent.
None of it portends an encouraging trajectory for a coach in his seventh season. Cronin is a developmental coach whose finest seasons came with players who were in his program for multiple years. With free agency now the only constant in the college game, it might be time for Cronin to develop a new plan for success.
Opinion time
How does the rest of the men’s basketball season play out for the Bruins?
Everything comes together and the team makes a deep NCAA tournament run The team plays better before another early tournament exit The bubble is burst and the team misses the tournament
Do you have a comment or something you’d like to see in a future UCLA newsletter? Email me at ben.bolch@latimes.com, and follow me on X @latbbolch. To order an autographed copy of my book, “100 Things UCLA Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die,” send me an email. To get this newsletter in your inbox, click here.
