UCLA will begin play in the 2025 NCAA women’s basketball tournament Friday evening at Pauley Pavilion against Southern in a matchup of the 68-team tournament’s top and 66th-seeded teams.
“I think there is two real big focuses for us,” Bruins coach Cori Close said at a Thursday news conference. “Being very present. You need all your energy, day by day, round by round, possession by possession, to go to doing your job. And so really just focused on that.
“I think the second thing we’re really focused on is playing to win, playing to go get things, playing to earn what you want. There is a level of aggression, and I think that we showed that in the second half of our championship game. I think we got a taste of what that feels like, what the mentality was like, huddles were like, how do we play the game.”
Oddsmakers have made UCLA a 41 1/2-point to 42 1/2-point favorite.
The Bruins (30-2) finished second in the 18-team Big Ten Conference behind USC, but won the conference tournament, overcoming a 13-point second-half deficit to defeat the Trojans, 72-67, March 9 after losing to USC in both regular-season meetings.
The Jaguars (21-14) qualified for the tournament by winning the Southwestern Athletic Conference tournament. Southern was also the regular-season champion.
As the NCAA tournament’s third-lowest seeded automatic qualifier, Southern was required to play in the First Four, defeating UC San Diego, 68-56, Wednesday at Pauley Pavilion, with senior guard Saniyah Reed scoring a career-high 24 points in 17 minutes off the bench.
The victory was the Jaguars’ first in the NCAA tournament after five first-round losses and a loss to Sacred Heart in the 2023 First Four.
The winner will advance to play Friday’s Richmond-Georgia Tech winner in a Regional 1 second-round game Sunday at Pauley Pavilion.
UCLA has never won an NCAA women’s basketball championship, although the team led by Basketball Hall of Famer Ann Meyers won the 1978 Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women championship, four years before the NCAA began conducting a women’s basketball tournament.
The Bruins’ furthest progression in the NCAA tournament were Elite Eight appearances in 1999 and 2018.