51-44 Final Four victory<\/a> against fellow No. 1 seed Texas, it was clear that the Bruins\u2019 thoughts were trained on a common goal.<\/p>\nNow, they train their thoughts on Sunday, when they will face South Carolina for the tournament crown.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe do so much mental work,\u201d Betts said postgame. \u201cWe\u2019re constantly trying to improve our mental space and our mental toughness.\u201d<\/p>\n
Assistant Tasha Brown is in charge of making sure every player can reset and move on after an adverse situation. Each Bruins player has her own reset routine: Some are verbal, others visual. Jaquez regulates her breathing. Every player on the team knows the others\u2019 routines so they can help each other through them.<\/p>\n
Brown is often seen on the bench during games making hand motions to remind the players of their process. They know they won\u2019t be perfect, but they have to continue playing. When UCLA looked back at last season\u2019s loss to UConn and its regular-season defeat to Texas in November, the theme that emerged was disappointment that they didn\u2019t compete for 40 minutes.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s one thing to have all the tools, but then the real work began with the Final Four. Even though the first item on the game plan was to take care of the ball, the Bruins couldn\u2019t stop turning it over, giving it away 23 times to Texas.<\/p>\n
How does mental preparation carry over when UCLA is making the same mistake again and again?<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery single practice throughout the past few years, we\u2019ve been doing a thing called special situations. \u2026 Whether we\u2019re down three or up nine, just putting ourselves in those positions to see how we\u2019re going to react,\u201d Dugali\u0107 said. \u201cWe were built for the moment.\u201d<\/p>\n
When Gianna Kneepkens overthrew a pass to Lauren Betts on a transition attempt, the Bruins reset and forced a miss on the next play. When Dugali\u0107 lost the ball on a tie-up with Madison Booker, she responded with a block on Ashton Judd the next time down. The mistakes kept coming, but so did the proper reactions. The Bruins kept their circle small, focusing on what they could individually control.<\/p>\n
The arc of this season has been about resetting from the loss to the Huskies. The way UCLA has prepared, the way Rice and Jaquez have developed their mental toughness for the last four years, bore out despite more tests than they could have ever hoped for.<\/p>\n
Rice knew she didn\u2019t have her best game in the Elite Eight, when she shot 2 of 10 from the field and had the ball in her hands for three separate shot-clock violations. Her teammates knew they would see a different version of her Friday, and Rice individually reset with 11 points, five rebounds, a block and a steal against Texas.<\/p>\n
Kneepkens couldn\u2019t hit a shot in the regional rounds in Sacramento, but she reset and focused on defense rather than scoring. She was part of a collective defensive performance on Madison Booker that limited the Longhorns\u2019 first-team All-American to 3-of-23 shooting.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy mindset going in is I wanted to be super aggressive on the defensive end,\u201d Kneepkens said. \u201cShots are going to go in, they\u2019re not going to go in sometimes. If you play with your mind like that, basketball is not so fun.\u201d<\/p>\n
It would be generous to describe the performance UCLA put forth against Texas as fun, but it got the job done. Despite the turnovers, despite letting a 13-point lead with 4:36 to play dwindle to three, the Bruins had the fortitude to emerge with a victory.<\/p>\n
After losing to UConn last April, Betts said, \u201cWe need to show up more prepared and ready to win. And that has nothing to do with the coaches. That\u2019s everything to do with us. \u2026 I hope this fuels us and I hope that we come out angry.\u201d<\/p>\n
Betts and the Bruins felt that anger. They sat in it, they worked through it, and they figured out how to move forward from it. And now they\u2019re moving another step forward into the national championship game.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PHOENIX \u2014 Lauren Betts watched the game film of UCLA\u2019s 2025 Final Four defeat to UConn about a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":853340,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[7,49,48,666,5481],"class_list":{"0":"post-853339","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-ncaa","10":"tag-ncaa-football","11":"tag-ucla-bruins","12":"tag-womens-college-basketball"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116346948424739614","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/853339","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=853339"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/853339\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/853340"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=853339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=853339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=853339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}