UCLA Women's Basketball: Cori Close Blames This For Bruins' Loss To Trojans

Your UCLA Bruins women's basketball program dropped its first game of the 2023-24 season to crosstown Pac-12 nemesis the USC Trojans on Sunday in front of a sold-out Galen Center crowd, 73-65.

Per Grace Whitaker of The Daily Bruin, sixth-year UCLA head coach Cori Close blamed the now-14-1 club's lone loss of the season (thus far) on a variety of issues.

“Most of the time, the more urgent, aggressive team wins and that wasn’t us,” Close said. “Everybody has a portion of the blame and we didn’t execute to get the ball inside. We didn’t do a lot of different things."

“They were asking me about being [previously] 14-0. I could care less,” Close added. “And sometimes, I think it’s a disadvantage, because sometimes it makes blind spots linger around longer than they should.”

“To win the rivalry game is not when we sat together and said at the end of the year what we wanted to accomplish. That isn’t the end game,” Close allowed. “It’s part of the process.”

The Bruins allowed the Trojans to score 23 points off of turnovers. UCLA also connected on a miserable 18% three-point conversion rate, a season nadir. The team seemingly had no defensive answer for USC star wing JuJu Watkins, who scored 16 of her 32 points off free throws as she made a veritable parade to the foul line.

UCLA will get a chance to redeem itself on Friday, when it will play The Associated Press' third-ranked team (the Bruins have slid to fifth), the Colorado Buffaloes.