The energy was all positive for the UCLA Bruins for their postgame press conference on Sunday after their 77-62 win over the defending champs and #1 team in the country, South Carolina.
Bruins’ head coach Cori Close showed respect to the Gamecocks’ program and their legendary head coach Dawn Staley, saying that she’s “set the tone of what women’s basketball excellence should be” with South Carolina dominating the sport over the past decade.
“I thought they were taking shots that they didn’t want to have to take on a pretty consistent basis,” Close said postgame after the Bruins held South Carolina to 36% shooting in the game. “We knew that if we could force them into running halfcourt offense we’d have a really good chance.”
South Carolina amazingly only scored one fastbreak point in the game and scored just 11 points off of UCLA’s 17 turnovers. Even with one of most impressive wins in recent program history, Close still acknowledged that this isn’t March quite yet.
“It’s November 24th. Am I proud of our team? Yes but this is just the beginning,” Close said. “We just can’t get tired of doing things right.”
Sunday’s win was the first time in program history that the Bruins have defeated an AP #1 team in the country, with the Bruins doing so in convincing fashion.
“We all want the same thing at the end of the day,” junior center Lauren Betts said of the team. “It doesn’t matter who’s scoring the most points, at the end of the day we all just want to win.”