NCAA Tournament: Oklahoma's Experience On the Line Against UCLA's Impressive Youth

Oklahoma versus UCLA is a contrast — not in basketball styles or coaching philosophies, but of experience versus youth.

The No. 16-ranked Sooners (27-6) and 14th-ranked Bruins (26-9) tangle on Monday night in a second-round NCAA Tournament game at Pauley Pavilion in Los Angeles, one team fortified by years of knowledge and hardship and guile, the other bolstered by energetic bodies and unencumbered minds.

OU, with two fifth-year seniors and a sixth-year senior, is the older team. UCLA, with two freshmen in the starting lineup and three more coming off the bench, is the younger.

“We are not going into this game saying, ‘We have experience and therefore we are just going to show up and the experience takes care of itself,’ “ said OU coach Jennie Baranczyk. “You've got to work. And it's March, and anybody can do anything.”

The game is scheduled for a 9 p.m. CT tipoff and will be televised by ESPN2.

The No. 5-seed Sooners lean on a decorated class of outgoing seniors who are trying to keep their careers alive; the 4-seed Bruins ride a decorated class of newcomers — the No. 1-ranked class in the nation this season, according to HoopGurlz/ESPNW — who are just getting their careers started.

OU gets 38.7 points per game from Ana Llanusa, Taylor Robertson and Madi Williams.

UCLA’s fab five freshmen average a combined 35 points per game and includes four players who were ranked among the top 49 prospects in the country last year — Kiki Rice (No. 2), Gabriela Jaquez (No. 19), Londynn Jones (No. 22) and Christeen Iwuala (No. 49). Rice and Jaquez were co-MVPs of last year’s McDonald’s All-America Game.

Llanusa, 24, has been playing college basketball since 2017. Rice was 12 years old when Llanusa signed with OU.

None of that matters, the coaches say. But does it?

“Since we have been playing together for so long, we have, like, this connection that not a lot of other teams have,” Robertson said. “We already know what each other is going to do before we even do it, and it just makes playing really easy. Just being able to experience this, especially with Madi and Ana for five years now, is just really cool.”

But UCLA has won big this year with a recruiting class that ranked No. 1 for a reason.

“Sometimes there's a youthfulness that, when you don't have that experience, you just play,” Baranczyk said. “And then sometimes, when you get to the point that you are experienced, you understand how much better it is to just play.”

Although their grand trio is the heart and soul of the team, OU is hardly just Llanusa, Robertson and Williams. There’s much more experienced on the roster: forward Liz Scott is a senior. Guard Kennady Tucker, a key contributor off the bench, is a senior. Forward Skylar Vann, point guard Nevaeh Tot and guard Aubrey Joens are all juniors.

All but Joens (a transfer from Iowa State) went through the lean years of the end of the Sherri Coale era, then enjoyed last year’s rebuild in Year One under Baranczyk.

In basketball, as in life, character often can be found lying in the cool shadow of adversity.

OU has eight different players who have at least 85 career games under their belt. The Sooners have 517 career starts and 1,043 total combined games.

UCLA? Five key players have yet to experience their 36th career college basketball game, and the roster as a whole has appeared in 685 career games.

But UCLA coach Cori Close has seen a hunger from her youth-based squad — which also includes a little experience in senior guard Charisma Osborne (she leads the Bruins in scoring at 15.3 points per game) and graduate senior forward Gina Conti (fifth at 6.7) as well as senior guard Camryn Brown (ninth at 3.0).

Rice may be a freshman, but said this week she’s been waiting “all my life” to play in the NCAA Tournament.

“You want it bad,” Close said. “We've been preparing for months and months and for our freshman class, this is something they have been dreaming about doing.”

Baranczyk said she’s impressed with the Bruins’ talent, depth, guard play and defense, and she acknowledged that a lot of that comes from that No. 1-ranked recruiting class.

“What they have had as experience is pretty darned good for a first year,” Baranczyk said. “ … Hopefully (OU's) experience comes out as we step across the lines (Monday).”