This post was updated Nov. 3 at 2:37 a.m.
Down 10 points after eight minutes.
Down 20 after 20.
The best UCLA team since 1978’s championship-winning squad was stopped 85-51 in its first-ever NCAA Final Four appearance April 4 – unable to surpass a title-bound UConn bunch led by 2025 WNBA first overall pick Paige Bueckers.
Six months later, No. 3 UCLA women’s basketball is set to commence the 2025-26 season Monday – the last potential championship campaign for the eight seniors and graduate students who make up two thirds of the roster.
It’s a tall task, but this season is national-championship-or-bust for the Bruins – and fans seem to know it, with season tickets sold out for the first time in program history.
The Bruins – who entered last year’s March Madness tournaments with the No. 1 overall seed, won the Big Ten tournament, were ranked No. 1 in the nation for 12 weeks and went 34-3 with 23 straight wins – return all but one starter, including preseason All-American and ESPN’s projected 2026 WNBA No. 1 overall pick senior center Lauren Betts, who averaged 20.2 points and 9.5 rebounds last season.
Graduate student guards Gianna Kneepkens – who transferred from Utah in May – and Charlisse Leger-Walker – who transferred from Washington State in 2024 but did not appear last season due to an ACL tear – also join the fold with a combined 209 collegiate games played.
Kneepkens recorded a career-high 19.3 points per game and a 44.8% clip from beyond the arc in 2024-25 – stats that would have ranked second and first for the Bruins last season, respectively – and Leger-Walker recorded four double-doubles and two triple-doubles in her final Cougar campagin.
Freshman forward Sienna Betts highlights UCLA’s three-person freshman class as the No. 2 recruit in the nation but will miss the season opener with an undisclosed lower leg injury, coach Cori Close said Oct. 29.
Senior guards Kiki Rice – a former No. 2 recruit herself and another projected 2026 WNBA first-round pick – and Gabriela Jaquez return to Westwood after finishing second and third, respectively, in points for the Bruins last season. But like Lauren Betts, Kneepkens, Leger-Walker, Rice and Jaquez also enter their final collegiate seasons.
In fact, seven of UCLA’s 12 rostered players are in their final year of eligibility.
The only non-first-year or final-year Bruin is redshirt sophomore forward Amanda Muse, who appeared in 19 games and averaged just 7.7 minutes on the court.
Additionally, all four of UCLA’s 2024-25 freshmen departed after just one season.
This season is all that matters.
After exiting 2023’s and 2024’s March Madness in the Sweet Sixteen and breaking through to the Final Four for the first time in program history last spring, the 2025-26 campaign will define this era of UCLA women’s basketball.
Nothing will change the records that UCLA’s 2025 Final Four squad set, but whether they are remembered as the team’s peak or the catalyst for an eventual national-title run remains up in the air.
Although UCLA will dodge preseason No. 1 UConn and No. 2 South Carolina in its non-conference slate, it will still face four ranked opponents – three in the top 10 – in its first nine games.
And the Bruins will face five of the six ranked teams in the Big Ten – which boasts the most preseason top-25 teams of any conference besides the SEC, which has eight.
UCLA is largely considered a basketball school – historically because of the men’s basketball program. But the men’s team hasn’t won a title in 30 years and has just two championships over the past 50 years.
Does that sound like a blue blood?
The Bruins’ best chance at putting Westwood and Pauley Pavilion back on the map lies with Close, Lauren Betts and the 11 other players of the women’s team.
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