The UCLA women's basketball team earned a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament for the first time in program history this year. After a 32-2 season and a Big Ten Tournament Championship, the Bruins earned the top overall seed in March Madness.
This seeding was much to the dismay of their opponents' head coaches, as both South Carolina's Dawn Staley and Southern California's Lindsay Gottlieb felt that their squads were more deserving.
Clearly, these words got back to UCLA head coach Cori Close. Before their matchup against No. 16 seed Southern University, the automatic qualifier from the Southwestern Athletic Conference, Close provided a unique challenge for her team as she spoke pregame in the locker room.
Cori Close presents challenge for UCLA ahead of matchup vs. Southern
Close was candid with her Bruins team just moments before their first-round matchup, citing the doubts that many have about their team.
"You earned this position. What are you going to do with it?" asked Close. "We know what we earned. Possession by possession, we are going to show, we don't need to tell. We don't need to talk trash ... we will show with our actions."
This is the exact kind of message that fans expected to hear from Close. Her team has proven to be resilient this season as they dropped two contests to their bitter rivals, the USC Trojans, but they had the fortitude to bounce back and knock them out in the championship of the Big Ten Tournament.
Southern should not have an answer for star center Lauren Betts or the rest of the Bruins, but games like this can tell you a lot about how focused a team is heading into the tournament. If UCLA can come out playing like they have something to prove, there may not be a scarier team in the country.
With a mindset like this, combined with the National Coach of the Year, a Player of the Year candidate and several other talented players, this UCLA team should make school history and advance to their program's first Final Four.
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