Latest news with #TimeaGardiner
Yahoo
05-04-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
'We're not done': UCLA women look to reload for another NCAA title chase
'We're not done': UCLA women look to reload for another NCAA title chase UCLA's Timea Gardiner (30), Lauren Betts (51), Gabriela Jaquez (11) and Kiki Rice (1) huddle during a break in play. All four are eligible to return next season for the Bruins, who reached the Final Four for the first time in program history. (AJ Mast / Associated Press) Lauren Betts buried her face in a towel at the end of the UCLA bench. The Bruins center breathed deeply, lifted her head and wiped her tears. She doesn't want to go out like this. 'Coming back next year, I think I'm just going to continue to grow as a leader,' Betts said after UCLA's historic season ended with an 85-51 loss to Connecticut in the national semifinal Friday, 'and remind everybody what that standard is and show that with urgency every single day.' Advertisement UCLA broke ground with the program's first NCAA Final Four appearance. The Bruins set a single-season program record with 34 wins. They claimed their first conference tournament title since 2006. Yet the disappointment of the worst Final Four loss in NCAA tournament history has motivated them to push further toward UCLA's first national championship since 1978. 'Really unusual to be in this position at the Final Four and have zero seniors in your locker room,' head coach Cori Close said, 'and to have an opportunity to come back stronger, more connected, learning from this experience and be better the next time.' Read more: UCLA's run to the Final Four ends in record rout by UConn: 'We got our butts beat' Advertisement Every player on UCLA's roster has eligibility to return, including Betts, a draft-eligible junior who already expressed her desire to play with her younger sister Sienna. A stretch 6-foot-4 wing, Sienna is set to join the Bruins after being named the most valuable player of the McDonald's All-American game this month. 'She's a way better shooter than I am,' Lauren said. 'To be honest, I feel like for her being younger, I think she is a little bit smarter than I am, too. She's genuinely one of the smartest basketball players I've ever been around.' The Bruins have also signed guard Lena Bilic to reach the NCAA scholarship limit of 15. Playing for Croatia's ZKK Tresnjevka 2009 in the country's top league, the 6-foot-3 guard averaged 15.4 points, six rebounds, 1.8 assists and 1.7 steals per game. With Sienna's addition, the Bruins have stockpiled talent at the four position, where Angela Dugalic, Timea Gardiner and Janiah Barker split time this season. Dugalic, a graduate student who has one year of eligibility remaining because of a knee injury in 2022, started 63 games in the last two seasons. She said she has not made a decision about her next steps, balancing a possible return with the WNBA draft and her Serbian national team obligations. Advertisement The logjam of athletic, sharp-shooting forwards places a higher emphasis on improved guard play after the Bruins' backcourt turned the ball over seven times with just three assists against Connecticut. The biggest reinforcement might already be on UCLA's sideline. Graduate student Charlisse Leger-Walker is expected to play next season after redshirting while rehabbing a knee injury suffered in 2024. While sidelined, she became a respected motherly figure around the team because of her maturity and leadership. But when the former Washington State star returned to practice last month, she quickly reminded teammates of what a three-time All-Pac-12 honoree can still bring on the court. Read more: How UCLA aced the transfer portal to build a Final Four roster "I just tell people Charlisse was definitely one of the best players I played against my freshman year and the entire season,' junior guard Kiki Rice said. 'She's so talented, has a really high IQ, does everything well on the court." Advertisement Every day for more than a year, Rice wrote in her notebook that the Bruins would go to the Final Four. The experience was grander than she had imagined. Nearly 20,000 people packed Tampa's Amalie Arena for the Final Four games. Back home in L.A., city monuments were lighted up in blue and gold to honor the Bruins. It was the kind of support Rice dreamed of when she signed with UCLA. So as the junior guard watched the final seconds tick off the clock Friday, Rice acknowledged the frustration of a bad performance and the sadness of a season's end, but also felt the pride of a historic run. She still mustered a smile. 'I'm not going to forget the fact that we had such a great year,' Rice said. 'To be in the Final Four, that's what you dream of, and that's what you work for. But I think obviously, we're not done. We want to win a national championship.' Get the best, most interesting and strangest stories of the day from the L.A. sports scene and beyond from our newsletter The Sports Report. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Yahoo
03-04-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
How UCLA aced the transfer portal to build a Final Four roster
UCLA forward Timea Gardiner, celebrating a three-point basket against LSU, had 17 points in the Elite Eight victory of the NCAA tournament. (Young Kwak / Associated Press) If at first UCLA coaches don't sign a recruit, they try, try again. Relying on years of relationships fostered through high school recruiting, the Bruins have navigated the fast-paced transfer portal to make a super team no one seems to talk about. Advertisement They started with the No. 1 recruiting class in the country that's now grown into experienced juniors. They added Lauren Betts (Stanford), Angela Dugalic (Oregon), Timea Gardiner (Oregon State) and Janiah Barker (Texas A&M), all former McDonald's All-Americans and five-star prospects. The result is the program's first NCAA Final Four appearance and a matchup against No. 2 Connecticut on Friday at 6:30 p.m. PDT at Amalie Arena. Gardiner was one win away from this stage a year ago. She helped Oregon State to the Elite Eight before she entered the portal. Having played with Kiki Rice, Londynn Jones and Betts on the youth national team, Gardiner had experience with many UCLA players and a long relationship with head coach Cori Close from the high school recruiting process. She focused on the Bruins almost immediately. 'For me, coming out of the portal was going somewhere I knew I could develop as a pro and be at a place where I knew I would be supported not only on the court but off the court,' Gardiner said. 'This [the Final Four] is a plus.' Gardiner powered the Bruins to the best NCAA tournament result in program history with 17 points in UCLA's regional final win over Louisiana State, nailing five of eight three-pointers to help overcome the absence of Betts, who missed all of the second quarter because of foul trouble. Advertisement Read more: How to watch UCLA vs. UConn in the Final Four and what to expect Gardiner's smooth three-point shot was the exact need coaches wanted to fill when they pursued her in the portal last spring. The 6-foot-3 forward's addition along with Dugalic, another stretch four who transferred to UCLA from Oregon in 2021, gave the Bruins a surplus at the position. But the crowded roster didn't deter Barker, a 6-foot-4 forward who starred at Texas A&M. The fact that the Aggies' second-leading scorer and Gardiner, who was the Pac-12 sixth player of the year in 2024, were willing to take smaller roles with their new team speaks to the culture UCLA coaches have created, guard Charlisse Leger-Walker said. 'When you come on your visits, when you talk to the coaches, when you talk to the players, it's very clear that they care not just about you as a basketball player, but about everything else outside of basketball,' said the Washington State transfer who will return to the court next season after redshirting because of a knee injury. 'For transfers coming in, they see that and it's their second time around during the recruiting process so they're not blinded by just the best facilities or the best whatever it is.' Advertisement The Bruins have those things too, Leger-Walker added. They enjoy a basketball-specific practice facility they share with the men's team. They fly on chartered planes. Forces outside of basketball are only going to continue to change the sport as revenue sharing is expected to come into effect as soon as next week. The consequences of the ever-changing name, image and likeness rules are still playing out as players try to rush transfer decisions before the newest law takes effect, said UCLA associate head coach Shannon LeBeauf, who is also the program's recruiting coordinator. The longtime assistant calls coaching her "calling.' Incorporating monetary decisions into roster building is dicey, LeBeauf said. The NIL decisions fall on Close's desk. Yet the Bruins have tried to balance the new world of college sports while holding true to the program's long-standing mission to teach, mentor and equip players for life beyond UCLA. Bruins forward Janiah Barker, right, high-fives teammate Angela Dugalic after she scored and drew a foul during a game against Michigan State earlier this season. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times) 'You're trying to find that match where it still is a good match, and it's just not transactional,' LeBeauf said. 'We want to make sure that our relationship is transformational, it is creating a great experience. … Because I don't know if you would really enjoy that kind of experience if it was just all about money.' Advertisement The Bruins are enjoying every bit of their first NCAA Final Four run. Arriving in Tampa this week, they settled into the best team hotel available — a perk bestowed to the highest seed in the tournament — and unwrapped Jordan Brand swag bags. NCAA gift boxes in their locker room included customized lettermen's jackets and phone accessories. It's already exceeded the Bruins' expectations. 'This has been a plus,' Gardiner said. 'I'm super happy to have joined a team that's so amazing with incredible women. We've done amazing things so far and we can't wait to continue.' Get the best, most interesting and strangest stories of the day from the L.A. sports scene and beyond from our newsletter The Sports Report. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
New York Times
11-03-2025
- Sport
- New York Times
Oregon State completes unlikely run to WCC title, lands NCAA bid
A year ago, Oregon State pitched itself as America's team in March. An underdog story out of the Pacific Northwest, unranked to start the season, the Beavers had nonetheless challenged for the Pac-12 title and were one game away from the Final Four. How could you not root for them? Then, Oregon State lost to South Carolina in the Elite Eight, conference realignment left the Beavers without a real home in 2024-25, and the bottom fell out. The top six players in minutes played transferred, including All-American Raegan Beers and three other players (Timea Gardiner, Donovyn Hunter, and Talia von Oelhoffen) who would win conference championships in 2025. They lost five of their first six games of the regular season, the lone win coming against a Division II opponent. The roster was so depleted that a walk-on was getting rotation minutes.
Los Angeles Times
06-03-2025
- Sport
- Los Angeles Times
If all goes as planned, UCLA and USC women will renew rivalry in Big Ten tournament
INDIANAPOLIS — Timea Gardiner buried a corner three-pointer inside a high school gym here Thursday afternoon, commencing an almost daily tradition for the UCLA women's basketball team. Clap-clap-clap, clap-clap-clap. Coach Cori Close's gesture signaled it was the end of practice, players quickly following her lead. Clap-clap-clap, clap-clap-clap. Everyone gathered in a circle, feet touching in a show of unity. Anyone who wanted to say something about the practice could speak. Gardiner said she felt the team was locked in. Other coaches and players shared equally positive messages. It was a familiar routine in unfamiliar territory, the Bruins joining rival USC among the newcomers in their first Big Ten women's basketball tournament. After dominating their new conference counterparts during the regular season, the top-seeded Trojans and second-seeded Bruins are widely expected to meet again in the tournament championship Sunday afternoon at Gainbridge Fieldhouse. Should the anticipated title matchup materialize, the Bruins can avoid going uh-oh-and-3 against the Trojans after dropping the first two games, including an 80-67 setback Sunday at Pauley Pavilion. 'The silver lining,' Close said of the latest defeat, 'is that there has been an unbelievable response from our player leadership.' Close said point guard Kiki Rice and forward Gabriela Jaquez convened a players-only film session Monday morning that was universally described as difficult but necessary. Breakdowns were acknowledged. Grievances were aired. 'It's just unacceptable,' Jaquez said Thursday of the way the team played as she said on the bleachers inside the Arsenal Technical High gym, 'and what I appreciate most about this team is it's going to do whatever it takes and we're not satisfied and we did not feel good by any means after that, so it's like, how can we change? 'That's why I respect all the girls, and we took accountability with each other. We're the ones on the court, and we need to be better.' To reach the game everyone in Los Angeles — and much of the rest of the country — wants to see, the Trojans and Bruins must avoid the sort of stumbling blocks they have nimbly sidestepped all season. In conference games not involving each other, USC and UCLA are a combined 31-1 (those confounding Iowa Hawkeyes!). Fortunately for the second-ranked Trojans, their path to the championship game does not include Iowa, which is on the other side of the bracket from the team it defeated by seven points last month in Iowa City. After notching its first conference regular-season championship in 31 years, USC (26-2 overall, 17-1 Big Ten) will open the tournament at 9 a.m. PST Friday against ninth-seeded Indiana in a quarterfinal. Fourth-ranked UCLA (27-2, 16-2) will play either Illinois or Nebraska later in the day. To emphasize the point that nothing is guaranteed this time of year, Trojans coach Lindsay Gottlieb told her players that even their opening game in the conference tournament could be as difficult as a second-round game in the NCAA tournament. Five Big Ten teams are nationally ranked, and 13 are projected by ESPN to make the NCAA tournament. 'In this league, if you're an eight, nine seed — shoot, if you're a 10, 11 seed in our conference — you're probably an eight, nine seed in the NCAA tournament,' Gottlieb said. 'So we look at each game as, this is a one-and-done situation and these are really good teams that can beat anyone on any given night.' History suggests that the Trojans and Bruins will get their third meeting. In Big Ten play, USC outscored its conference opponents by an average of 16 points per game. UCLA was nearly as dominant, outscoring its opponents by an average of nearly 14 points. The stakes this week go well beyond staging a third rivalry game. While USC is seeking a second consecutive conference tournament title after winning the final Pac-12 tournament a year ago, UCLA has not won a conference tournament since 2006. There's also the need to jockey for NCAA tournament positioning. Should the Trojans or the Bruins prevail in the Big Ten tournament — particularly by knocking off the other team in the championship — they would have a strong claim to the No. 1 overall seed in the NCAA tournament. Of greater importance would be ensuring a top seeding in one of the Spokane regionals that feeds into the Final Four in Tampa, Fla. Then again, Close said she wanted her team to think about what it needed to do to win rather than what winning would mean. 'I think we felt the pressure of what was at stake in that last home game, and I didn't think we played our competitive best,' Close said. 'I think we need to focus on our process, I think we need to focus on our preparation, and then we need to surrender the outcomes and just give everything to each other. 'I'm trying to stay away from all of that because I think they all know, everyone has big dreams and big goals on this team, but I think focusing on what's at stake — eh — I don't know if it helps us get to where we want to go.' As far as this week goes, there's no doubt about the intended destination. It involves a renewal of the crosstown rivalry, halfway across the country.
Yahoo
03-03-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Familiar demons haunt UCLA in another loss to USC
LOS ANGELES — With eight seconds left in the third quarter, UCLA trailed their crosstown rivals USC by 13. The Bruins had possession with a chance to stem a 9-0 Trojans run heading into the final period. Instead, UCLA wasn't aware of the clock, and the quarter ended with the ball in forward Timea Gardiner's hands. It brought to mind a similar situation from a previous Bruins-Trojans matchup when the teams met in the 2024 Pac-12 semifinals. UCLA had the ball with a chance to win at the end of both regulation and the first overtime and didn't get a shot off either time, eventually losing in the second extra period. The Bruins may not have been in a position to win regardless Saturday with the double-digit deficit, but the scene was all too familiar, especially for those who have doubts about UCLA's abilities to win big games. The Trojans left Pauley Pavilion with an 80-67 victory to earn the Big Ten regular-season title — the first opportunity for either team in their inaugural season in the conference. 'I'm just really pissed off we didn't show up and do our jobs,' UCLA coach Cori Close said after the game. 'We're gonna have to do some real hard looks in the mirror.' Over the past three seasons, when the pressure has been the highest, the Bruins haven't been at their best. In 2023, after upsetting Stanford in the conference tournament semifinals, UCLA fell to lower-seeded Washington State in the championship game. The Bruins had numerous late-game miscues against USC in the Pac-12 tournament the next year and followed that with a fourth-quarter letdown against LSU in the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Tournament. In the process, they've also lost four straight games to their rivals. Spending 12 weeks as the top-ranked team in the country and winning 27 games during the regular season, including a dominant victory over defending champion South Carolina, doesn't diminish the disappointment of falling short with a championship on the line in the Big Ten regular-season finale. UCLA has the talent to compete with any other team. There remains a mental hurdle that it has to overcome to start hanging banners.😤😤😤 UCLA Women's Basketball (@UCLAWBB) March 2, 2025 Close was red in the face as she addressed the media after the loss, crumpling up the box score in frustration. Always one to shoulder the blame on herself and her coaching staff, Close stopped just short of calling out players who didn't perform up to expectations. 'Our team was prepared,' Close said. 'We knew what to do and we didn't do it.' From the tipoff, the Bruins didn't follow their game plan. They gave JuJu Watkins a clean look on her first jumper by going under a screen, allowing Watkins to get comfortable from the perimeter. They didn't box out on a Rayah Marshall jumper — despite sinking into the paint and deliberately conceding that shot — which enabled Kiki Iriafen to secure the offensive rebound and a put-back. They had bad floor balance in transition defense, where Watkins is a nightmare. Each of those items was at the top of the scouting report, and UCLA screwed up in every facet, falling behind by double digits before the first media timeout. When the Bruins pulled to within three, mistakes piled up in the second quarter. Kiki Rice nearly committed a backcourt violation to start the period, and Angela Dugalić telegraphed a pass on the perimeter on the ensuing possession, which allowed Iriafen to score on the break. Janiah Barker followed that with a wild attempt at the rim in isolation, and UCLA once again trailed by 10. The pattern followed every time the Bruins managed to close the gap. USC would regroup and UCLA would throw the ball all over the gym, not even giving itself a chance to get over the hump. In that game-breaking stretch to end the third quarter, a Bruins' miscommunication between Dugalić and Gardiner led to a turnover and fast break score for Iriafen. That preceded two missed free throws and yet another giveaway on an entry pass to Lauren Betts. 'We turned the ball over, we didn't execute the scout,' Rice said. 'But those were mental errors, self-inflicted wounds. I didn't think they really did anything to prevent us from being able to run our offense.' UCLA was successful on set plays. The Bruins executed effectively on nearly every baseline out-of-bounds and were able to score within their structured offense, even against the best defense in the Big Ten, but they broke down when the first option didn't work. Superstars like Watkins can score off broken plays and settle a team when the rhythm breaks; for the second time against the Trojans, Betts wasn't able to do that. She was whistled for multiple travels in the paint and a three-second violation, unable to find her footing. Her 11 points and 11 rebounds weren't the dominant presence that UCLA needed to counter Watkins or even Iriafen. For most of the season, Betts has been the best player on the court. She carried the Bruins past Louisville, the Gamecocks, Baylor and a stacked Big Ten schedule — most recently helping UCLA erase a 12-point second-half deficit against Iowa. 'It's a very weird dichotomy, because on the one hand, we have a team that's lost two games all year, and we have a lot to still play for, and we have a lot to be proud of,' Close said. 'And at the same time. I'm really angry. And we let each other down today.' One way of looking at this loss is that it represents a bad matchup for the Bruins, who have beaten everyone else in their path this season. But after this core has come up against the same ceiling for three years running, it's more likely that UCLA has some structural issues that show up in close games, and double-digit victories in 22 of the first 23 games didn't test those. 'We'll regroup, we'll get better, we'll respond to this,' Rice said. 'But I do think we're going to have to figure out a way to be different than we have been this entire year.' The Bruins projected confidence that they can change, pointing to the win over the Hawkeyes and another close contest against Michigan State as examples of their toughness. But those aren't Final Four teams, and that is the standard UCLA is chasing. This was a golden opportunity for the Bruins to prove themselves on several fronts: that they could fight back against the Trojans, that they could execute down the stretch in a close game, and that they could win a championship. All of those possibilities are still in front of UCLA. The ball is in the Bruins' hands. What are they going to do? This article originally appeared in The Athletic. USC Trojans, UCLA Bruins, Women's College Basketball 2025 The Athletic Media Company
