UCLA Women’s Basketball Wins First NCAA National Championship, Defeating South Carolina 79-51

PHOENIX — The blue and gold confetti floated down over Mortgage Matchup Center on Sunday night, settling on a scoreboard that looked more like a November blowout than a national championship game.

UCLA 79, South Carolina 51.

At long last, the school that built its identity on men’s basketball dominance has an NCAA women’s banner to hang in Pauley Pavilion — and it arrived in the form of a 28-point dismantling of the sport’s defining dynasty.

UCLA’s win delivered the program’s first NCAA women’s basketball title, capped a 37-1 season and marked the Bruins as the first Big Ten women’s team to win the national championship since Purdue in 1999. It also handed South Carolina its second straight lopsided defeat in the title game and signaled a landscape in which the Gamecocks are no longer alone at the top.

“This is beyond my wildest dreams,” UCLA coach Cori Close said on the floor afterward. “I always believed it was possible, but it took a special group whose character raised their ceiling.”

Bruins flip the script

A year ago, UCLA’s first trip to the Final Four ended in a 34-point loss to Connecticut. Center Lauren Betts later said she watched that game “over and over” in the offseason, looking for every missed rotation and soft box-out.

On Sunday, the 6-foot-7 senior and her teammates turned that pain into a performance that left little doubt about who owned this season.

UCLA, a slight underdog against the top-seeded Gamecocks, seized control immediately and never trailed. The Bruins led 21-10 after the first quarter, 36-23 at halftime and 61-32 after a third quarter that broke open a game billed as a toss-up between No. 1 seeds.

All five UCLA starters scored in double figures. Senior wing Gabriela Jaquez led the way with 21 points, 10 rebounds and five assists. Betts finished with 14 points, 11 rebounds and two blocks, capping a dominant tournament run that earned her Most Outstanding Player of the Final Four. Guards Gianna Kneepkens (15 points), Kiki Rice (10) and Charlisse Leger-Walker (10) rounded out a balanced attack.

“I’ve pictured this moment so many times,” Jaquez said. “I always believed we were going to do it. To see the confetti, to see our fans, my family — it’s everything I imagined.”

South Carolina, which entered the night 36-3 and seeking a fourth national championship under coach Dawn Staley, never found rhythm against UCLA’s length and discipline. The Gamecocks shot 18-for-62 from the field (29 percent), including 2-for-15 from 3-point range, and turned the ball over 14 times.

Tessa Johnson led South Carolina with 14 points. Freshman guard Agot Makeer added 11 off the bench. Sophomore forward Joyce Edwards, the team’s leading scorer this season, finished with eight points on 3-for-10 shooting. Senior guard Ta’Niya Latson, another focal point of the offense, managed just four points.

“They’re a quality team, very experienced,” Staley said. “They took what they learned from getting to the Final Four last year and made the right adjustments. We didn’t match that.”

A statement from the start

Oddsmakers had favored South Carolina by about four points, and the over/under of 130 suggested a low-possession, defensive struggle. Instead, UCLA dictated every term.

The Bruins opened by pounding the ball inside to Betts, forcing South Carolina’s front line to collapse and freeing space on the perimeter. When the Gamecocks tried to speed the game up, UCLA answered with patient, organized offense and a defense that turned passing lanes into traps.

South Carolina shot 17 percent in the first quarter, its worst single period of the season. A late 3-pointer by Rice pushed UCLA’s lead to 21-10, and it never dropped below double digits again.

If the first half was about control, the third quarter was a knockout. UCLA opened the second half with a 12-3 run, constantly switching between high-low looks to Betts and drive-and-kick opportunities for Jaquez and Kneepkens. The Bruins outscored the Gamecocks 25-9 in the period, stretching their lead to 29.

“The third quarter was us trusting who we are,” Betts said. “I get beat up every game, but I’m not just playing for myself. I’m playing for my teammates. We were not going to let up.”

South Carolina finally outscored UCLA in the fourth, 19-18, but by then the Mortgage Matchup Center — home to the WNBA’s Phoenix Mercury — had turned into a de facto UCLA celebration. Close hugged her assistants. Players on the bench swayed along with the UCLA band. The Gamecocks, who have become accustomed to playing for titles every spring, could only watch.

“This is UCLA’s day,” Staley said when asked about a sideline exchange with Connecticut coach Geno Auriemma in Friday’s semifinal. “We’re not going to dampen UCLA’s day with it.”

Ending a long wait in Westwood

The win closes a half-century loop for UCLA women’s basketball.

The Bruins won the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women championship in 1978, before the NCAA sponsored women’s tournaments, behind stars Ann Meyers and Denise Curry. In the decades that followed, the women’s program produced All-Americans and deep tournament runs but never captured an NCAA title, even as banners from John Wooden’s men’s teams loomed overhead.

This is UCLA’s first national basketball championship — men’s or women’s — since the men’s team won in 1995. It also comes less than two years after the university’s move from the Pac-12 Conference to the Big Ten, a realignment driven primarily by football and media rights money.

In its second Big Ten season, UCLA went 18-0 in conference play, becoming the league’s first women’s team to finish an undefeated conference schedule since Maryland in 2014-15. Now, the Bruins have delivered a national title in a league that had not claimed one in women’s basketball since the late 1990s.

“We talked a lot about honoring the legacy at UCLA by building our own,” Rice said. “It feels good to say the women have a banner up there, too.”

Jaquez’s presence at the center of it all adds another layer for a program tied closely to its city. The Mexican American senior is the younger sister of former UCLA All-American and current Miami Heat guard Jaime Jaquez Jr. The family’s name is attached to a scholarship fund at UCLA supporting Latino students.

“To see her on this stage, representing where we come from, it means a lot,” Close said. “L.A. is a big part of our story.”

South Carolina’s standard, and a shifting map

For South Carolina, the loss does not erase a decade of dominance, but it changes the conversation.

Under Staley, the Gamecocks have become the standard in the post-Connecticut era, winning national titles in 2017, 2022 and 2024 and reaching six Final Fours in roughly 10 years. An undefeated 38-0 season in 2023-24 reset expectations for what a modern powerhouse could look like.

This year’s team reached a third consecutive title game by ending Connecticut’s 54-game winning streak in the semifinals, a 62-48 victory that underscored the Gamecocks’ defensive edge and deep roster. But Sunday’s defeat, following an 82-59 loss to UConn in last season’s final, made South Carolina the rare dynasty to drop back-to-back championship games by wide margins.

Staley, who has become one of the most influential voices in women’s sports, framed the loss as part of a broader rise in competition.

“The game is growing,” she said. “Other programs are putting in the investment, the time, the resources. As much as it hurts, this is what you want for women’s basketball.”

The sport has the audience to match. Last year’s title game between Iowa and South Carolina drew nearly 19 million viewers, the most-watched women’s basketball game in U.S. history. The 2025 final between UConn and South Carolina also ranked among the top three all time. Ratings for this year’s tournament were still being finalized Sunday night, but early rounds suggested viewership remains well above pre-2023 levels.

A national sport, at last

The setting for UCLA’s breakthrough — a sold-out arena in downtown Phoenix, decked out for the city’s first Women’s Final Four — illustrated how quickly the event has grown.

The NCAA and local organizers built out a weekend of free fan activities: an interactive “Tourney Town,” youth dribbling events through downtown streets, open practices and concerts. The goal, officials have said, is to make the women’s tournament a destination in its own right, not just a complement to the men’s event.

On Sunday, those efforts ended with an image that would have been hard to imagine even a decade ago: a West Coast public school, now playing in a Midwestern-based superconference, routing a Southeastern Conference powerhouse to win a national women’s basketball title in a WNBA arena in the desert.

Whether this becomes the start of a new UCLA era remains to be seen. Betts is expected to be a high WNBA draft pick. Jaquez and several other key players are seniors. South Carolina, with Edwards, Makeer and another top recruiting class, will almost certainly be back in contention.

But as the Bruins gathered at midcourt and posed with the trophy, that uncertainty was part of the point. In a sport once dominated by a single program, UCLA’s breakthrough and South Carolina’s stumble suggested something new: a women’s college game where power, like the confetti drifting across the floor, is finally starting to spread.