The NCAA Selection Committee not only awarded UCLA’s Women’s Basketball team with a No. 4 seed in the Greensville Regional 1, but they also granted Pauley Pavilion two more WBB games.
Gina Conti stated, “Probably all of our teammates are excited because… we’re able to have a chance to have all you guys come to our games.”
Camryn Brown followed with, “We’re ready to play. If we could play tomorrow, let’s play tomorrow.”
After the hard work put in by the Bruins during the regular season and especially during the recent Pac-12 Tournament where UCLA came in 2nd place after upsetting Stanford, No. 4 seeding was well deserved and an “accurate reflection of what [UCLA WBB] earned,” as stated by Coach Close.
Going up against Sacramento State (25-7), a university making their first ever appearance in the NCAA Basketball Tournament, UCLA (29-5) needs to keep their focus among “friendly neighbor” Sacramento as Coach Close remarked “I will say that Mark Campbell, who is the head coach of Sac State is a really good friend of mine and of Tony’s on our staff as well, he actually texted me two nights ago predicting this exact match-up and said ‘can you tell the committee we don’t really want to match up good friends in the first round’ and I said ‘I don’t have the kind of pull.’”
Grateful to be celebrating at the selection show with her teammates, Kiki Rice shared how the upperclassmen have helped prepare herself, as a freshman, for March, “I think the attention to detail after practices demonstrated by Charisma and the rest of the seniors has been really important… I have no doubt that everyone will prepare me.”
On Saturday, the first 100 students will be able to attend the March Madness Game in Pauley for free! Make sure to support!