UCLAs journey for first national title begins Saturday in NCAA Tournament

In a nod to the challenges ahead, UCLA women’s basketball players wore “MARCH MODE” T-shirts as they watched the NCAA Tournament selection show.What they saw had a very March 2024 and March 2025 feel as much as it did the present month.For the third consecutive year, UCLA might have to beat LSU to get to the Final Four.Also included in the Bruins’ Sacramento 2 bracket are Richmond and Ole Miss — teams they faced in the NCAA Tournament last year.Their opening game against Cal Baptist at Pauley Pavilion on Saturday evening is a rematch of their NCAA Tournament opening game from 2024 in the same arena.Fortunately for the top-seeded Bruins, they don’t care who they’re playing nearly as much as how they’re playing.“This actually played out most of the way we thought it was going to,” UCLA coach Cori Close told fans and boosters gathered inside the team’s practice facility.“We’re excited for the matchups we have.“Obviously, we have tremendous respect for everybody in that bracket, but this is about us.

This is about us being the best version of ourselves, us playing our best basketball, us being aggressive.”Forward Angela Dugalic said the “MARCH MODE” T-shirts reflected the team’s locked-in approach since beating Iowa by a record 51 points in the Big Ten Tournament championship.“We had the mindset of, ‘This is gonna be a Final Four game’ during practice,” Dugalic said of a team seeking a second consecutive Final Four appearance and first NCAA championship to go with the AIAW title the Bruins won in 1978.That meant that the men’s practice players who helped prepare the team were pressuring the Bruins full court to challenge them and unlock the best version of themselves.It’s all part of Close’s efforts to seek continual improvement and focus only on the next game.“Bottom line for us,” Close said, “is that I just really want us to keep a present mindset.What’s the challenge in front of us? How do we play our best b...