BREAKING: UCLA Earns No. 1 Overall Seed in NCAA Tournament

UCLA is the No. 1 overall seed in this year's NCAA women's basketball tournament, as announced on ESPN's "NCAA Women's Selection Special" on Sunday.

The Bruins will face the winner of UC San Diego/Southern in Los Angeles on Friday.

UCLA went 28-2 in the regular season, its only losses having come against crosstown rival USC, which it would go on to beat in the Big Ten Tournament Championship.

The Bruins ultimately won 30 games going into the national tournament, a program record.

Winning the conference title was vital to UCLA earning the No. 1 overall seed. It did so when its backs were against the wall, fresh off yet another loss to the Trojans, who just seemed to have the Bruins' number.

But UCLA went on an epic run, eventually taking down its greatest foe in the game that mattered most.

"I think it's not the end all, be all, but it really felt like a significant growth step," said UCLA coach Cori Close this past week. "A hurdle we needed to get over. I think for our own confidence, our own toughness going into the NCAA Tournament, I thought it would be a lot harder to get us to a place of -- you never outperform your self-image.

"So, if they don't see themselves as a championship team, of one that can compete for a Final Four and a national championship, it's really hard to coach them into those places. But when you have a thing that you go grab and you conquer and you do things that were really, really difficult, and you find a way, well, it puts us in a different situation, psychologically, I think, going into the NCAA Tournament."

Just as Bruins men's coach Mick Cronin said, at UCLA, what ultimately matters, of course, is winning the NCAA Tournament. Winning the Big Ten Tournament will help Close's team in that endeavor.

“This is a place that only hangs national championship banners in Pauley Pavilion,” Close said. “But it's also a place, and our program is about acknowledging growth and really staying committed to the process. And that was a pretty great step in our process."

The winner of UCLA's game on Friday will face the winner of the 8-seed Richmond/9-seed Georgetown matchup.

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