The UCLA women’s basketball team’s back-to-back wins came after a week of soul searching.
The team lost to both No. 10 Oregon State and unranked Oregon on the road the weekend before, the latter game costing the team a shot at the Pac-12 regular season title, which they were favored to win at the beginning of the season.
Though No. 15 UCLA (20-7, 11-5 Pac-12) rallied and won both games at home against Washington and Washington State, coach Cori Close spent most of the press conference after the Washington game discussing how the team reacted to its most recent loss.
“We were probably in the locker room after Oregon for over an hour. … (Everyone) was being honest about frustrations,” Close said. “(The team was) saying ‘Let’s not talk about the the symptoms; let’s talk about the illness. Why do we not compete the way we know we can?’ That’s not acceptable in our program so we had to face it, deal with it and move on.”
Close didn’t name any names about who was doing and receiving the confrontations, saying that she wanted to keep it within the team, but redshirt senior guard Nicole Kornet alluded to the confrontations, saying they were beneficial.
“After Oregon State (sic) we confronted different teammates, we spilled out our feelings and we got closer,” Kornet said. “I think that obviously plays itself out on the court.”
The team had a lot to be frustrated about. The dialogue came during a stretch in which they had lost three out of four games on the road. Its five conference losses were already more than it had the previous season, and the team was hoping to keep improving from its Sweet 16 run last year.
Junior guard Jordin Canada was integral in that Sweet 16 run and the high expectations the team had set for itself. An all-conference selection last year, Canada took the losses as an opportunity to rethink her role on the team and learn from their struggles on the road.
She helped the Bruins regroup, scoring 22 points as UCLA pulled off the upset against Washington this weekend.
“What we talked about in Oregon, what I felt I needed to work on, was creating more urgency for our team,” Canada said after the Washington game. “I know it starts with me most of the time, and I know I’m sometimes inconsistent in those areas – in practice and in games as well.”
Close noted that sometimes confrontations can send teams in the wrong direction, but she seemed pleased by the way her team handled the situation.
“We’ve gone through a lot this week,” Close said. “Coming off of those road losses we’ve had to do soul searching, we’ve had to do some confrontation with each other and we’ve had to look in the mirror and say ‘How do we have to grow?’ and that takes courage.”