UCLA women’s basketball all-time Sweet 16 record

The UCLA Bruins No.1-seeded women’s basketball team is riding a wave of momentous positivity following their 84-67 win over the Richmond Spiders on Sunday evening in the second round of the NCAA Tournament. The win clinched the Bruins spot in the Sweet Sixteen for the third straight year and the tenth time in program history.

The reigning Big Ten tournament champions will be hoping to reverse a trend that has seen their season end at this stage of the tourney in each of the last two seasons. In 2023, they fell 59-43 to No. 1 seed South Carolina and were defeated by LSU, 78-69, a year ago. This is the first time the Bruins have held the top seed in the tournament, and they will be the favorites against the No. 5 seed Ole Miss Rebels when they tip off on Friday in Spokane.

The Rebels are coming off a 69-63 victory over the Baylor Bears and find themselves in the round of 16 for the first time since 2023, and the 12th time in school lore. Freshman guard Sira Thienou led the charge against Baylor with a team-high 16 points and six rebounds, while senior backcourt mate Madison Scott led Ole Miss in scoring average (12.1), assists (3.8), and blocks (0.9) per game.

The Bruins are led by 1st Team AP All-American, Lauren Betts, who led the squad in scoring (19.7), and rebounds (9.7), per game. She also led the Big Ten in field-goal percentage (64.3), and blocks per game (2.9) to spearhead a dominant debut season (32-2) in the conference for UCLA.

Fans of the team in gold and royal blue are hopeful that Betts and her teammates can lift the Bruins to the Elite Eight for the first time since 2018. That year, UCLA defeated No. 14 seed American University, 11th-seeded Creighton, and second-ranked Texas before losing to top-seeded Mississippi State, 89-73.

The only previous instance of the Bruins reaching the Elite Eight happened in 1999, when they got past UW-Green Bay, Kentucky, and Colorado State before being crushed 88-62 by Louisiana Tech to fall short of the Final Four. UCLA lost in the round of 16 in 1985, to Georgia back when the tournament only had 32 participants, and in 1992, to SW Missouri St., who made it all the way to the Final Four as an 8-seed that year.

More recently, the Bruins lost in the Sweet Sixteen to Texas (2016) and Connecticut (2017). This is the most talented team they've assembled, and they have a terrific chance of overcoming obstacles and advancing to the program's first Final Four, which will take place this year at the Amalie Center in Tampa, Florida.

Two more tournament wins would help supporters forget some of the close calls and failures to reach the sport's summit. The attempt to improve upon UCLA’s 2-7 record in the Sweet Sixteen is just the first step.