The UCLA Bruins took on Dawn Staley and the South Carolina Gamecocks in this year’s women’s NCAA Tournament national championship game on Sunday. Coach Cori Close helped her team emerge victorious with a dominating 79-51 score at the Mortgage Matchup Center in Phoenix.
After the game, NBA legend Magic Johnson took to social media to congratulate UCLA on its victory. He also highlighted how they managed to hold back South Carolina’s offense with their “suffocating” defense, resulting in their triumph.
“I want to congratulate the new 2026 women’s NCAA Basketball Tournament Champions – The UCLA Bruins!” Johnson tweeted. “They blew out South Carolina 79-51 and dominated from the start to finish it.”
“The Bruins had five players in double figures – Lauren Betts had 14 points, Gianna Kneepkens 15 points, Gabriela Jacquez 21 points, Kiki Rice 10 points and Charlisse Leger-Walker finished with 10 points,” he added.
“The true key to victory was UCLA’s suffocating defense, which took South Carolina out of everything offensively. Give coach Cori Close and her coaching staff credit on a great game plan and shoutout to the team for executing the game plan to perfection,” Johnson concluded.
The UCLA Bruins closed out the 2025-26 season with a 37-1 (18-0 Big Ten) record. This is also their first national title in the program’s women’s basketball history.
Cori Close shares her thoughts on winning her first national championship with UCLA
Cori Close led UCLA to its first national championship since 1978. In the postgame presser, she credited her players for the victory, saying they were the reason for creating history this season.
“It’s not about me,” Close said, as per USA Today. “It’s about watching these incredible young women be dream chasers, to watch them growin way they will remember, and it will stick with them for the rest of their lives.”
“It’s about their work and their habits yielding. We say this, we want to recruit courageous — gets me choked up. There were a lot of times we wondered if it could be true. I said I wanted to find uncommon, courageous women that were willing to make uncommon choices that maybe possibly yield an uncommon result, and today it did,” she added.
Cori Close was named the coach of the UCLA Bruins in 2011. Since then, she’s led the program to 10 NCAA Tournament appearances. Last season, they were eliminated in the Final Four by the UConn Huskies.
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