This post was updated April 12 at 11:23 p.m.
Elina Aarnisalo’s latest post on Instagram felt like deja vu.
And it was, considering it is the second time in three years she has announced her commitment to UCLA women’s basketball.
After spending the 2025-26 campaign at North Carolina, Aarnisalo will return to Westwood – where she began her collegiate career. The sophomore guard announced this in a joint post with the Bruins’ Instagram account.
The Helsinki, Finland, local played in every game her freshman season at UCLA with 10 starts – the most of anyone in her freshman class.
She appeared in the starting five as a point guard in place of an injured then-junior guard Kiki Rice at the beginning of the season before coming off the bench to average 5.1 points, 2.2 rebounds and 3.4 assists per game.
“I was out recruiting this summer and a very successful head coach said to me, ‘Elina is going to be a difference-maker in your program,'” said coach Cori Close at the time of Aarnisalo’s commitment in 2024. “She is a great facilitator, she is aggressive, she’s a great shooter and passer, she gets to the free throw line, she is an impact-level player. We’re really lucky to have her.”
Everyone in her recruiting class, including Aarnisalo, transferred after the conclusion of the 2024-25 campaign.
With the return of graduate student guard Charlisse Leger-Walker from an ACL tear, plus the addition of graduate student guard Gianna Kneepkens and freshman forward Sienna Betts, it was likely that the outgoing athletes thought that they would see reduced playing time on the soon-to-be national championship-winning squad.
Aarnisalo averaged the third-most minutes of any Tar Heel this season and was one of four players to average double-digit scoring. She tallied 105 assists and shot 40.4% from behind the arc, both marks ranking second on the team.
When then-No. 11 UNC and then-No. 3 UCLA met in November, Aarnisalo’s team-high 13 points off 6-for-16 shooting from the field kept the Tar Heels in the game before they ultimately fell to Close’s squad 78-60.
The Bruins, who originally recruited Aarnisalo when she was playing for the Kangoeroes Basket Mechelen in Belgium, have increasingly turned to the international stage to find talent.
Two-thirds of this year’s freshmen class hail from outside the United States, and the sole high school recruit who has maintained her commitment to UCLA, guard Somto Okafor, comes from Barcelona.
Aarnisalo is the second player UCLA has picked up in the transfer portal since it opened on April 6. The Bruins acquired another guard in freshman Bonnie Deas – a Melbourne local – last week out of the portal from Arkansas.
[Related: Bonnie Deas joins NCAA champions UCLA women’s basketball out of transfer portal]
While UCLA is beginning to build back the backcourt it lost with its graduating class, it still lacks a strong base of tenured college players. Aarnisalo will be the only true junior on next year’s roster, which features just two other upperclassmen.
In the meantime, the former – and future – Bruin was met with open arms as multiple current and graduating athletes commented messages of excitement on Aarnisalo’s commitment post.
