Everything UCLA's Cori Close said after defeating South Carolina women's basketball for first national championship

UCLA head coach Cori Close spoke with the media after leading the Bruins to its first national title in a dominant win over South Carolina.

Here is everything she said postgame.

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There’s been so much written about your relationship with Coach Wooden in the past. If you could talk to him today, what do you think the conversation would be like? How much will this help you and your staff because you have 12 hours before the transfer portal opens up

“I did say to my mom, The transfer portal just got easier. I think, God, I don’t know. I think Coach Wooden actually wouldn’t care as much about the championship as he would about staying true to our process. I hope I would make him proud by realizing and recognizing that this is a by-product of what’s happened in their habits, in their love for each other, in committing to a process over a long period of time.”

“When you just look at how the pyramid of success is built, the foundations, I just think he would be way more interested in hearing about that journey than he would about the final product because he knows that’s a by-product of what was happening on the inside.”

Now that you’ve had time to come through this final year and get to this point, how do you evaluate yourself as a leader now?

“Well, I hope I’m a leader that chose to grow. If one of our core values is going to be a growth mindset, it has to start with me. When you guys were asking the questions of them about what they learned from last year, being able to turn the pain of regret into the pain of discipline, to then see the chosen pain of discipline pay off in having championship habits today, that’s really rewarding.”

“I just think that’s the best part, right? When you ask Lauren about what she’s most proud of, it’s about what she was able to overcome. Even for me as a leader, I think I’m most proud of the ways in which I had truth tellers around me that told me the hard things, and that hopefully I had a humble heart to go, Okay, I receive that, and these are the changes I have to be responsible to make.”

You, Gabriela [Jaquez], Lauren [Betts], and their teammates wrote the pages to this championship season through hard work and a strong bond. What will stand out to you about this year winning it all?

“It’s just so rare in life that you can start a journey with a group of people and really envision something, then trying to reverse engineer a plan that will actually lead you to the point that we’re experiencing right now, that it actually happens, that you’re in that position that you had planned for. It’s just really with great humility. Man, we are so fortunate to be experiencing that. They earned every bit of it.”

“I think that one of the things that we’ve been doing for the last about 30 days, every single day we’ve been starting out film with these ‘I will’ statements. They have to write five to seven of ’em every time. Sometimes we will add gratitude statements, too.”

“The last three or four days at the end of our prep time we’ve been having each person, they can choose anyone, 21 of ’em, they came up with them, about things that were going to be important. They all had to recite one out loud. When I literally think back even on the games of this Final Four, I just think about how many of those “I wills” they actually lived out. That’s just so rewarding to see something that you really planned for, you really sacrificed for.”

“One of the things that they said is every player had to sacrifice. If any of our six seniors were on any other team, I believe they would have been an All-American, first team. To say that that is not as important to me than experiencing this together, wow, how lucky am I to be part of young women that would make that hard, right choice.”

The 1990s meetings with Coach Wooden, what are things he said to you or interactions that you had back then? How do you think those influenced how you coached even this season?

“It’s really hard to narrow them down. They were so rich. I’ve taken a lot of people with me to meet him. I try to always warn them that you need to write down questions because the wisdom is going to be so great you end up speechless.”

“The reality is is you leave his presence and you just go, I hope I can remember everything, every nugget that he, first of all, lived and role modeled, then, secondly, taught. I remember he passed away the year before I got this job. I remember thinking to myself, Oh, my gosh, I don’t want to let him down. The biggest way I can pay it forward is to live in a way and coach in a way and teach in a way that pays it forward what he did for me.” [She says while tearing up]

“I think the biggest thing he did is every time I would ask him, What would you do here? He would never answer. He would always make me realize that I’m wired uniquely, and it wasn’t about what he would do, it’s how am I wired to lead to my best.”

I remember feeling the sense of freedom going into my press conference because I was — and Nan, his daughter, was right there front row. His son, Jim, has been so supportive of us all year long. His great-granddaughter Cori, I owe her everything, because if I hadn’t spelled it like her, he never would have let me in the door. I really think about if I’m going to make him proud for how he poured into me, it’s going to be about keeping it about the process and truly loving kids well for things that are way beyond UCLA. That’s where we get to teach, mentor, and equip for life beyond UCLA. I couldn’t be more grateful for the time he gave me.”

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In sports we talk about delayed gratification. It took you 15 years to get to the mountaintop. It took Wooden 16 years. Now that you finally have reached this moment and can silence criticism about not being able to hack it in these big moments, how satisfying is it?

“I really never listened to those things. I care that my players feel that we show up for them. I care that the families of our players feel like we lived out what we told them when we recruited them. I care about having consistency with our mission.”

“This really is a by-product, and it really is only meaningful because of the people I get to share it with. I wondered how it would feel. I really did expect us to win today. I thought about it several times. I’m like, ‘We’re going to win.’ I felt very peaceful all day. It wasn’t about whether or not we got the W or not. I wanted us to be able to play our best when our best was needed. We delivered on that. It just is so much for me not about a national championship, but it’s the validation that it can be done differently.”

On Gianna, what she was able to do for this team, obviously a plus 41, can you take me through how meaningful it is for you to have her succeed when she’s someone who works as hard as she does. She went through heartbreak in the NCAA tournament.

“Gianna is a spectacular competitor. One of the things I thought we really could give her, she’s always had to be the most hard-working player. She’s always had to do it alone. I think that I told her, I said, When you come here, you will get buoyed by the comradeship of everybody does that here. That’s the baseline expectation here.

She was like, ‘Really, that can happen?’ I knew she was a competitor. I knew she would work her tail off. I didn’t know she was as funny as she is. I didn’t know she was going to fit in so seamlessly off the court. I also have to give a shout-out to her coach at Utah, Coach Rob. She’s a really good friend of mine. We FaceTimed her together right before we went into the locker room. I just think she prepared her really well. We are really lucky to have the by-product of that.”

About 10 years ago, you said you had the pyramid of success in your office, you had only the bottom rungs lit.

“Good memory.”

You talked about the fact you look at those 10 banners every single time you go out to practice. What’s the status of how many are lit on the pyramid of success? What does it mean to know you’re going to bang a banner right there?

“It is this humbling thing. Before every game, because of where our bench is in Pauley Pavilion, we watch down that hallway, and I literally touch each one. I just imagine that someday the by-product could be us hanging one. That is incredibly rewarding.”

“I think the pyramid of success, there’s a reason it’s been so timeless. There’s a reason that — I think I saw an article a couple of years ago by Forbes Magazine that it’s still the most widely used business motivational tool. Character never goes out of style. And I think that all of us, in life, sports, whatever, as we grow in our character, we grow in our consistency, good things happen. I just think it’s all lit now. We are believing in it in its entirety. But it will always be about the foundation first.”

 I spotted Carol Walters outside in the arena after y’all won. She said that she wishes she got some of that deal money in NIL back then in 1995. You were an assistant with UCLA back then. Can you tell what the difference was back then for the players, even some of the coaches like yourself, compared to now?

“Well, I think it was interesting. Ed O’Bannon really started that movement. I had a chance. I was at UCLA when they won the national championship in ’95. Just being a part of amazing people, we have some young men in this room that are part of that group. Ryan Hollins I happened to see today who was one of the beginning people. I think what I love is is that it is a different era now. What they said is that, yes, they’re thankful to be able to benefit from that, but it can’t overtake our love of the game or our love of each other.”

“I do think it’s night and day different deal. We’re a professional organization now. We’re building front offices. We have roster construction. I have GMs. It’s a different landscape. I was totally formed, I was in the building in Seattle when they won that. I used to stay after work and just sit up in the rafters and watch that team practice. It’s hard for me to even articulate how that formed me at the very beginning of my career. Those were my first two years of coaching. To be in this position now, I really go back to that.”

“But it’s interesting, when I got to UCLA as a head coach, I wrote six UCLA men’s alum and I wrote six UCLA women’s alums through the decade and said, What do you wish UCLA did for you that they didn’t? What advice would you give me? One of the first ones was financial literacy. The second one is providing more resources for mental health. The third one was access to the UCLA alumni network with more intentionality.”

“I have tried to be methodical about that because it doesn’t do any good if we give them this money, if they’re pros, and we don’t give them the equipping to actually be able to maximize those for real opportunities that change lives. I go back to those letters and those responses of how we built our infrastructure even now.”

You’ve talked about the sacrifices you’ve made in your own life to get to this point. Now that you’re at this point, won it with this group, does it change the way at all you think about those sacrifices?

“No. I think I’ve always thought that sacrifices are worth it, whether I wouldn’t keep doing them. But they literally are my family. I don’t have a family of my own. So I really do think of them like children. What would their parents want from me as sort of their basketball mama? What is an amazing thing is to be able to share this with the staff. Not only do I respect my staff so much, but I love them deeply. They really, in some ways, have become a second family for me.”

“I feel very purposeful about the sacrifices I’ve made on a personal level for what I believe is trying to live imperfectly but live out my calling. But I wouldn’t trade it.”

You mentioned your coaching staff. Obviously, so many players came before this moment. One of the people on your staff is Michaela. What was it like to share that moment with her? She said that Jordin Canada had texted her about the moment.

“Yeah, we were teasing her in the locker room. She was really emotional. Coach Tony was about time we just had to get some better players. We were just giving her a hard time. There’s been these really special moments. It was right when starting lineups were about to be announced. I was standing next to Michaela. She just put her arm around me. I’m just so happy to be a part of this. She was so emotional after the game. Her mom Edith and her high school guidance counselor, Miss Dotson, was here. There’s just been a connection piece with her. I can’t even put words to it. It’s just like she sort of gets it.”

“Even this morning as we did our walk-through, I got the whole circle together, I talked about the strength of the bond and how three strands woven together, they just can’t be broken, just valuing every person in the circle from managers to video interns to everybody else. Right after that Michaela came right to me and held on to me. To share that with a former player, she’s just really special (tearing up). I didn’t know what it was going to be like. I didn’t know that she was going to be such a dang good coach. She’s really good. She’s probably got a long pro career that she’s going to live out first.”

“This was even better experiencing this with her than I thought.”

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