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’s basketball coach ever had. A 79-51 rout of South Carolina gave the Bruins the first NCAA championship in program history. It capped a 37-1 season that included a 31-game winning streak and an unbeaten run through the Big Ten.

A month later, UCLA made sure she wasn’t going anywhere. Close signed a contract extension that keeps her in Westwood through the 2029-30 season.

Months before any of it happened, Close told EssentiallySports how she planned to get there. She didn’t talk about winning. She talked about what winning is for.

A banner now hangs in Pauley Pavilion. The coach who put character first ended up with the hardware anyway, which would not have surprised her greatest mentor.

A title she refused to promise

We spoke to Close in the thick of the season, with the Bruins flying and her name already on the Naismith Coach of the Year watch list. She was open about the weight of expectation around the final collegiate campaign of Lauren Betts and Kiki Rice.

Then she described the only kind of championship she was interested in.

That is the championship she got. The fuel behind it was painful. The Bruins’ 2025 Final Four loss to UConn was still raw when we spoke.

The dividend came twelve months later, by 28 points, in a national final.

The servant leader with a broom on her wall

What separates Close from the chasing pack isn’t scheme. It’s 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, whose executives and captains sweep their own locker room after every match.

She 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.

The mental side gets the same attention. Her “mind gym” sessions with the team’s mental conditioning coach put a real curriculum behind an idea most coaches only pay lip service to.

Reload, not rebuild

Close knew this roster teardown was coming. Asked about life after Betts and Rice, the focus was clear.

Then 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.

Then there’s the returner, Close lit up about most: Sienna Betts. Lauren’s little sister, and, per her coach, possibly the funniest player she has ever had.

With Sienna now headlining a returning core that includes Lena Bilić and fifth-year forward Timea Gardiner, the locker room belongs to her.

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’s basketball. In April, thousands packed Pauley Pavilion for the championship celebration and chanted her name.

When we asked what it means to be UCLA, her answer doubled as a recruiting pitch for the next era.

The 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.

Quotes from an exclusive EssentiallySports interview with Cori Close conducted during the 2025-26 season, prior to UCLA’s national championship.

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