UCLA women’s basketball held a .500 record seven separate times this season. Seven times, the Bruins stumbled and lost their next game. But on the eighth try, the team finally managed to get over the hump and now for the first time all season, hold a winning record.
After defeating Oregon 88-83 Friday night and Oregon State 66-63 Monday afternoon, UCLA’s record stands at 10-9, 4-3 Pac-12.
“I just had a sense in the locker room. I try to never talk about wins, but I can sense this was just a really huge turning point for us,” said coach Cori Close. “We’ve been this every-other team for a long time and as much as I try to downplay it, I could feel their intensity to go and get a sweep this weekend at home.
In the game against Oregon (9-8, 0-6 Pac-12), UCLA found itself in a shootout as Oregon took 42 3-pointers. The Bruins, led by senior guard Thea Lemberger’s 6-10 effort from downtown, responded with 9-19 from distance.
Lemberger finished with 25 points and senior forward Atonye Nyingifa led the way with a career-high 34 points while also adding 10 rebounds.
But when the Bruins found themselves down 77-64 with 6:27 left, it was the defense and rebounding, anchored by redshirt junior center Corinne Costa and her career-high six blocks, that took charge.
“As we switched up to man, we really focused in on boxing out and pursing the ball better,” Nyingifa said. “I think we just had a laser-sharp focus at the end of the game.”
Behind the defense and the offensive spark from sophomore guard Nirra Fields, who scored 10 of her 19 points in the 13-0 run, UCLA came storming back, erasing the double-digit deficit.
Whereas the Bruins depended on the big three of Lemberger, Fields and Nyingifa to beat the Ducks, it was the bench that propelled UCLA in its game against Oregon State (10-8, 2-4).
Fields led UCLA with 18 points, but it was the combined effort of the bench that Close and Fields pointed to as the main factor in the win.
Redshirt junior forward Rhema Gardner, junior guard Madeline Brooks and Costa combined to score a season-high 17 points off the bench.
“We’ve had several games where we’ve had zeros (off the bench), zero rebounds, zero points,” Close said. “In our locker room, we know we got over the hump because of the 17 bench points.”
Just like the game against Oregon, UCLA found itself in a close contest down the stretch.
But against the taller and bigger Beavers that featured a 6-foot-6 center, the Bruins ended the game with a series of passion plays that closed the door on Oregon State and capped off a successful weekend for UCLA.
The close games this weekend was nothing new for the Bruins, whose last five games have all been decided by six points or less. For a team whose last three losses were all by two points, it felt good to be being to string together two closely contested wins.
“We like to give coach gray hair, so we try to keep the game as close as we can,” Lemberger said, jokingly. “We’ve been improving a lot in staying together through adversity no matter what. When we do that, we’re confident we can win these games.”