SACRAMENTO — The team that can’t stop dancing won’t stop dancing.
The top-seeded UCLA women’s basketball team beat Duke 70-58 in the Elite Eight. It wasn’t balletic, but beautiful.
Sunday’s game at Golden 1 Center in Sacramento wasn’t a fun, free-flowing joy ride that so many of the Bruins’ wins have been this season.
It was a rattling, teeth-gritting, heart-thumping roller-coaster ride — weeeeee!
The Bruins weren’t having fun, exactly. They were having the time of their lives.
And in the end, they shoved their way to the front of the stage — and back to the Final Four.
Now the TikTok countdown is on before final exams in Phoenix, where redemption and legacy and a rematch await with either winner of the No. 1 Texas vs. No. 2 Michigan tussle in the Fort Worth Regional final.
And any questions — ahem, mine — about how the barely-battled-tested boogie-down Bruins respond to a significant stress test were answered.
The Bruins are built for this.
They’re not just talented. And they’re not just talented dancers (and postgame, Lauren Betts, Charlisse Leger-Walker and Gabriela Jaquez reprised the routine that went viral when they did it with the UCLA Dance Team during halftime of a men’s game this season).
They’re tough. And they’re locked in.
And unlike last season, when their program’s Final Four debut ended in a 85-51 national semifinal blowout loss to eventual champion Connecticut, they’re ready for what comes next.
They let us know in the second half Sunday.
Duke came floating in, still buzzing from Friday’s buzzer-beater in the Sweet 16. That slow-motion-in-real-time three-pointer by Ashlon Jackson that rolled around and around the rim as though the basketball gods needed just a little more time to determine UCLA’s opponent Sunday.
UCLA’s Lauren Betts, left, Gabriela Jaquez celebrate after the Bruins defeated Duke on Sunday to advance to the Final Four.
(Eric Thayer / Los Angeles Times)
It was to be Duke, who proved a dangerous No. 3 seed. The Bruins weren’t prepared for the Blue Devils to be so prepared for them, trailing at the break for just the second time this season. The first time was in November against Texas, when the Bruins — now a program-record 35-1 — suffered their only loss this season.
Still their only loss.
Even a fool could read the determination on the Bruins’ faces as they roared back from a 39-31 halftime deficit; they’d come so far together, but they so badly wanted to go further.
No one was ready to get off the ride, not least the six seniors who played the entirety of the second half, seizing momentum and the moment and hitting the Blue Devils (27-9) with a white-knuckled flurry of activity.
“Compliment them,” Duke coach Kara Lawson said, “for turning up their defensive intensity.”
There were 50-50 balls in name only, because UCLA seemed to be winning 100% of them.
UCLA players were ripping away passes. They were diving all over the floor and were all over the boards. They ratcheted up the intensity so much it spread into the stands, where the largely pro-Bruins crowd of 9,627 cheered deliriously.
Shots started falling. Turnovers stopped cascading. UCLA found its rhythm.
And UCLA’s 6-foot-7 star center Betts did what she does, with 15 points, eight rebounds and two blocks in the second half, of which she played all 20 minutes.
“I was just pretty mad,” she said. “You know, my senior season is on the line, so I kind of got to wake up a little bit.”
Angela Dugalic continued to be the matchup nightmare she has been all March; the 6-4 sixth woman scored 15 timely points to take some pressure off Betts.
UCLA coach Cori Close watches play during the Bruins’ win over Duke on Sunday.
(Eric Thayer/Los Angeles Times)
“I’m just so proud of her,” Betts said. “The confidence and her poise … you could get in your head in moments when we’re down … but she did all the right things and what we needed at the time.”
It was an entertaining Elite Eight clash that was brought to you by two coaches who staged, like up-and-coming chefs, under two of the greatest leaders the sports world has known.
UCLA coach Cori Close and Lawson committed to making sure we won’t lose John Wooden’s and Pat Summitt’s recipes — never mind all the seismic, disorienting shifts happening in college sports.
A former Tennessee star, Lawson brings Summitt’s brand crackling intensity to Duke, a mindset that she’s said calls for supreme confidence, chasing excellence and holding oneself to an all-around standard of success.
UCLA’s bench was uplifted all season by Close’s warm intentionality, learned from years of mentorship from Wooden. The main ingredients, she’ll tell you, requiring a dollop of growth, gratitude, of giving and not taking.
“[Our] team culture is not this nebulous thing or phrases on a wall,” Close said. “It’s a group of people that are willing to be committed to the hard, right behaviors over and over again. I cannot tell you how many times throughout that game we referred to our values, who we are, what our identity was, what we had to get back to.
“… I’m just really humbled and thankful to be a part of a team and staff that cares about things from the inside out. What you saw on the court is a reflection and a byproduct of what’s happened on the inside.”