After coach Nikki Caldwell left her UCLA women’s basketball team after three seasons for Louisiana State – at three times the salary – and after top returning player Jasmine Dixon was lost for the upcoming year due to a torn knee suffered in the off-season, one prominent thought stood out in my mind concerning these Lady Bruins:
Don’t expect another 28-5 (16-2 in the then-Pac-10 Conference) season.
New coach Cori Close will try and continue the momentum that UCLA had last year, but it will be tough as she will be without the services of not only Dixon, but also two graduated seniors who led the Bruins to their best record in over a decade – Darxia Morris and Doreena Campbell.
Markel Walker, a 6′ 1″ junior guard/forward, will be counted on to lead UCLA, as will 5′ 11″ junior forward Atonye Nyingfa, while people like Rebekah Gardiner, Mariah Williams and Thea Lemberger will need to step up if the lady Bruins are going to have any success.
While Pauley Pavilion is undergoing renovation, Close’s team will play their home games at the John Wooden Center on campus.
UCLA is picked by the Pacific-12 media writers to finish fourth in the conference, behind Stanford, USC, and California. Their schedule will be a killer as they not only have to play perennial power Stanford twice, but will also face Tennessee, with its eight national championships – tops in NCAA women’s basketball – and legendary coach Pat Summitt, who’s fast approaching John Wooden-like status, in the Wooden Center on December 17th.
They next travel to Philadelphia right after their match with Tennessee for tough games with Temple and St. Joseph’s, before opening Pac-12 Conference play against Cal and Stanford a week later.
Talk about a death march – to say that things won’t be easy is a pretty big understatement here.
Here’s my prediction on how these Lady Bruins will fare this season:
It will be a fairly tough go for Coach Close in her first year at the helm.
Though these Lady Bruins won’t be bad, they have lost too many key players to be a real contender in the Pac-12 at this time.
Fourth place and around 16 to 18 wins sounds about right, with an outside shot at 20 wins and a pretty decent shot at an at-large bid in the NCAA Tournament – if everything goes right.
Hopefully UCLA will surprise everyone like they did in 2010-2011 and go on a tear, provng the naysayers who predict mediocrity wrong.
We’ll just have to see.
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