\u201cI\u2019ve been fighting this inner battle. That\u2019s their dream, and my job is to help them be dream chasers. I want them to be rewarded for all that they\u2019ve given to this program, to me, to our community. I don\u2019t want to let them down. I wanna be all that they need me to be this year to put them in a position to be successful. And I want them to not be defined by 40 minutes.\u201d<\/figure>\nThen she described the only kind of championship she was interested in.<\/p>\n\u201cI want it to be that they jumped in so selflessly to present focus and growth and being a sacrificial teammate, that their success to win a national championship just is a destiny because of all the commitment they\u2019ve made to the process. Anything less than that, I think, is gonna be really shallow.\u201d<\/figure>\nThat is the championship she got. The fuel behind it was painful. The Bruins\u2019 2025 Final Four loss to UConn was still raw when we spoke.<\/p>\n\u201cWe got our butts kicked, and I think that hurt. You either have pain of discipline or pain of regret. And I think unfortunately, we have pain of regret. But fortunately, we\u2019re using that to really increase the pain of discipline, which I think will pay dividends down the road.\u201d<\/figure>\nThe dividend came twelve months later, by 28 points, in a national final.<\/p>\n
Basketball The servant leader with a broom on her wall<\/h2>\n What separates Close from the chasing pack isn\u2019t scheme. It\u2019s how diligently she studies leadership itself. There is a broom mounted on her office wall, a nod to the All Blacks rugby dynasty in the book Legacy<\/em>, whose executives and captains sweep their own locker room after every match.<\/p>\n\u201cThe thing I really took from that is that their executives and their captains sweep the sheds every day. I really wanna be a servant leader. I don\u2019t want that to be a coined thing that everyone talks about. I want it to be really lived out, that I see each day as, how can I serve my staff and my team?\u201d<\/figure>\nShe studies the best across sports. Wooden, of course, but also Erik Spoelstra, Steve Kerr, and Rams head coach Sean McVay, who she has grown close to over the past 18 months. McVay even opened his doors to Kiki Rice, who wants to be a GM one day, for a two-day look at how a professional organization runs.<\/p>\n\u201cSuccess leaves clues, and I wanna get all the clues I can to help me be the best leader I can be. I just have a passion for leadership. Regardless of the environment or landscape in which you lead, if you\u2019re influencing people well and serving people well, I wanna learn from you.\u201d<\/figure>\nThe mental side gets the same attention. Her \u201cmind gym\u201d sessions with the team\u2019s mental conditioning coach put a real curriculum behind an idea most coaches only pay lip service to.<\/p>\n\u201cIt\u2019s obviously a catchphrase to say pressure is a privilege, and we say it too. But then what? Okay, pressure is a privilege. We\u2019ve earned the right to feel this. But now how do we channel it so that it helps us be the best version of ourselves? If you ask any basketball player what percentage of the game is mental versus physical, they\u2019re all gonna say 75, 80, 90 percent mental. But then if you ask them, the last time you went to the gym, what percentage of your workout was based on the mental side? Mostly they didn\u2019t know how. No one\u2019s given them the tools.\u201d<\/figure>\nBasketball Reload, not rebuild<\/h2>\n Close knew this roster teardown was coming. Asked about life after Betts and Rice, the focus was clear.<\/p>\n\u201cWe are obviously in a situation, in a new era, that we are gonna be looking to reload, not rebuild. We are gonna look to aggressively seek elite talent from the portal to really build that puzzle again that has these complementary pieces that can lead to a championship. We\u2019re just trying to strategically position ourselves so that we have a chance to compete for the best talent in the portal.\u201d<\/figure>\nThen she went out and did it. UCLA made WNBA Draft history in April with six players selected, including a record five first-rounders, the most ever by one school. Within weeks, Close landed KK Bransford from Notre Dame, Addy Brown from Iowa State, Donovyn Hunter from TCU, Elina Aarnisalo from North Carolina, and Bonnie Deas from Arkansas, one of the strongest portal hauls in the country. The Spanish guard she teased in our conversation, Somto Okafor, arrives this fall, and this week the Bruins added Slovenian guard Lina Jerkovic to round out the class.<\/p>\n
Then there\u2019s the returner, Close lit up about most: Sienna Betts. Lauren\u2019s little sister, and, per her coach, possibly the funniest player she has ever had.<\/p>\n\u201cSienna has a bigger personality than Lauren, actually. Sienna is her own person, and she has her own journey. Sienna might go down as maybe the top five funniest players I\u2019ve had in 33 years. She is hilarious. I don\u2019t think there\u2019s any problem with managing the locker room. If anything, Sienna\u2019s running the locker room.\u201d<\/figure>\nWith Sienna now headlining a returning core that includes Lena Bili\u0107 and fifth-year forward Timea Gardiner, the locker room belongs to her.<\/p>\n
Early national rankings have the defending champs outside the top tier for 2026-27, with an entirely new starting lineup to forge. Close has heard worse. When she arrived in Westwood in 2011, she was told Los Angeles might never care about women\u2019s basketball. In April, thousands packed Pauley Pavilion for the championship celebration and chanted her name.<\/p>\n
When we asked what it means to be UCLA, her answer doubled as a recruiting pitch for the next era.<\/p>\n\u201cOne of the best parts of being the coach of the UCLA Bruins is I get to look a parent in the eye and go, name another place that\u2019s gonna give you the academics that we can give you, the access to the alumni network, the competitive excellence, the NIL package, the opportunities above the NIL package, because we\u2019re in Los Angeles. And most importantly, where else can you go that\u2019s gonna take such an intentional approach about investing in your daughter from the inside out?\u201d<\/figure>\nThe banner is up. The rings are on six pairs of professional hands. And the coach who insisted those things matter least has four more years to chase what she values most.<\/p>\n
Quotes from an exclusive EssentiallySports interview with Cori Close conducted during the 2025-26 season, prior to UCLA\u2019s national championship.<\/em><\/p>\nRead More<\/a> Samatha Noren<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Basketball Months before cutting down the nets in Phoenix, the UCLA boss sat down with EssentiallySports and explained the philosophy that carried the Bruins to history. When the buzzer sounded in Phoenix on April 5, Cori Close had delivered what no UCLA women\u2019s basketball coach ever had. A 79-51 rout of South Carolina gave the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":913137,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[124942,40168,3681,1869],"tags":[16302],"class_list":["post-913136","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","category-banners","category-basketball","category-rings","tag-nba"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/913136","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=913136"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/913136\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/913137"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=913136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=913136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=913136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}