NCAA Women's Tournament: For Cori Close, a happier ending is within sight

Don’t miss UCLA’s rise amid Friday’s loss.

ALBANY — “I’ve been doing this 26 years, and it doesn’t get any easier,” a clearly emotional Cori Close said, sitting at the podium next to Kennedy Burke and Japreece Dean, a pair who nearly brought Close to a career-defining win, leading in the second half before falling to Connecticut, 69-61.

Harder still because Close could see it. Her Bruins had played as well as could be expected two years ago, in what turned into an 86-71 loss just the same, in the Sweet 16. This time was different.

They’d held Connecticut’s duo of Crystal Dangerfield and Katie Lou Samuelson scoreless in the first half, trailed just 31-26, and were getting the shots they wanted. “Stay strong!”, she shouted to her team from the sideline, and when the half ended, she had her arm around Dean, getting in her ear before they even left the court.

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“She just encouraged me, like she always does, and just told me to stay aggressive despite my shooting and just to encourage the team and lead and just stay on attack mode,” Dean recalled following the game. Her team had lost, she was distraught about it, but in that moment, she smiled.

And that is what the macro view of UCLA produces, what is obvious when considering the program has built: this is a group that manages to “be where their feet are”, as Close puts it so often. She pushes ideas but has created a culture that encompasses them in real ways. Growth mindset? Show me a team that got better this year from start to finish. Can’t be done.

From 14-16 in her first year, to WNIT champs by 2014-15, and Sweet 16 or better ever since. Show me a program that graduated two WNBA players and promptly returned to the Sweet 16, led UConn in front of a Huskies crowd in Albany in the third, leading UConn players to wonder if this is where it would end.

Already up 37-36 in the third, Close would call for Michaela Onyenwere, just a sophomore, to get the ball out of the time out. She is just a sophomore, but went right at the indestructible machine that is Napheesa Collier, then again, four straight points, then a Lindsey Corsaro three, Corsaro just a redshirt freshman, and suddenly it was 46-41, the UCLA pep band was screaming amid the silence, and a smile played across Cori’s lips as she watched her Bruins defend, hand splayed against the side of her face.

“We didn’t come to play close,” she said afterwards. “We came to compete to win, and we believed it and fought for it.”

UCLA head coach Cori Close pleads her case to an official in an NCAA Tournament East Regional semifinal against Connecticut at the Times Union Center in Albany, N.Y., on Friday, March 29, 2019. UConn advanced, 69-61. (Brad Horrigan/Hartford Courant/TNS via Getty Images) /

Even when it went awry, UConn scoring the first six points of the fourth quarter to erase a 50-49 UCLA lead, Close called timeout, but stood with her staff for a full minute, letting the leaders on this team take responsibility.

“At this point in the year, I can’t control it all,” Close said. “I think all year long, we don’t want to have a program that has a bunch of plays and that I have to call the most brilliant game in order for us to win. I want our players to not only feel empowered but to be equipped with their skill, with their belief, with their confidence, with their communication.

“And I think in March players have got to be feeling empowered to make plays. I did the same thing at halftime. I said, What are you guys talking about? What are you seeing? And I trust them. They’ve earned that trust. I didn’t give them that trust, they earned that trust, and I want them — I think about most of them want to go on and play professional basketball, so I have a parallel mission to help us reach our potential, to help them grow as people and then to prepare them for their next set of dreams.”

That is what her UCLA teams do, and so there is progress. The mistake people make when considering UConn’s vulnerability is to simply assume the Huskies are doing something wrong, that there’s a magical formula to turn UConn into a fait accompli. Yes, the Huskies no longer have Breanna Stewart and the eight pros or will-be pros on that 2016 team anymore.

But it’s more than that. Cori Close and UCLA are in the vanguard of expanding elite in women’s basketball, too.

“The teams like UCLA with what Cori has done, they’ve gotten progressively better over the years, and the cycle was going to change,” Geno Auriemma said following the game. “All those teams that used to dominate the top, they’ve kind of come back to earth a little bit, so it’s made them much more competitive game. More people were in the mix, you know.”

That may not make it easier to sleep for Close Friday night, though. There’s an emotional buy-in that is clear in every small moment, not to mention the big ones. When Dean received an extra year of eligibility from an injury waiver by the NCAA, her teammates celebrated like they’d, well, just beaten UConn at a practice, dogpiling her.

Close is a competitor, so she could envision it playing out that way in Albany Friday night, and it came as no easy task to accept the game had ended, Close calling off her players from fouling with 30 seconds to go, a single clap of her hands in frustration as she turned away, before taking Burke out of the game and embracing her, thanking her for all she’d done for the program.

Her eligibility was over, but still Close was advocating for her in the postgame, saying she absolutely believes Burke’s name should be called at April 10’s WNBA Draft. She knows more than a little about that process, a year after seeing Monique Billings and Jordan Canada jump from UCLA to the league, and Close was on hand in New York that night as well.

All of it represents the kind of building that turns a program from an NCAA participant into a title contender. Now they’ve reached four Sweet 16s in a row, and this one, at least from the moment, projecting forward, feels less like a destination than last season’s Elite Eight did, not with so much young talent returning, Onyenwere and Corsaro and Lauryn Miller, and a recruiting class including Jaden Owens and Charisma Osborne en route. (The UCSB playmaker is turning UCLA into Point Guard U.)

Did it help Close? Not immediately. Not where her feet were.

“Well, it’ll be easier in a couple weeks,” she said. “I just love this group of young women. So right now all I’m thinking about is these young women and my responsibility to lead them in our mission as a program and to help them be their best as young women, as representatives of the university, as students and, of course, as competitive athletes.

“I’m excited about what we’ve had. I’ve been excited about it all year and very thankful we’re now at a place in our program where our culture is feeding itself and our recruiting is becoming very consistent.

“I have a lot to be proud of in terms of what my staff — really, they get so much credit for what we have built, but right now I see the eyes on the faces of these young women that I love very much and that are very disappointed but have grown immensely.”

And so, she gathered this group together, one that is building toward an obvious future where UCLA ends with the joy of destination as well as journey, and delivered her final message to them.

“As their head coach, I could look them in the eye and I could say: You can have peace. You finished empty. And as a head coach, that’s all I can ask for.”

The same is true for what women’s basketball got from Cori Close once again. Soon enough, UCLA will finish empty in April, not March.

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