PHOENIX — “Let me show you who Cori really is,” a UCLA staffer says as he pushes the door open to the UCLA coaches’ temporary locker room at the Final Four arena.
Around the corner, there’s a collection of recyclable cans and bottles that Close has picked up and set atop a mini fridge.
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In the next hour, those cans and bottles will be packed into a bag so they can take the flight back to Los Angeles with the newly crowned national champion UCLA Bruins. Behind Close’s efforts, the entire team regularly gathers these bottles and cans after practices and games. Staffers then take turns returning the recyclables for 5 cents apiece, and later, that money is pooled and donated to one of the Bruins’ chosen nonprofit organizations. Recently, the UCLA women’s basketball team paid for school uniforms and a computer for girls in Tijuana with money collected from these recyclables. The school later sent a photo of the girls watching one of the Bruins’ games this season.
After games and practices — and yes, even on the day the Bruins won their first NCAA title, thwarting resident powerhouse South Carolina 79-51 — Close collects these plastic bottles and cans, pulling them out of trash cans or grabbing them from the locker room or empty gyms. Coaches and players joke that if you can find Close’s blue purse, you’ll undoubtedly find some recyclable cans and bottles nearby.
“That’s just who she is,” the staffer says. “That’s Cori.”
If there’s a hallmark of UCLA during Close’s tenure, it’s a sincere selflessness, but until now, it hasn’t always translated into wins at the most elite level. But Sunday afternoon, Close, 54, won her first national championship, 15 years into her career as a head coach. In a sport dominated by longstanding luminaries such as Dawn Staley at South Carolina, Geno Auriemma at UConn and Kim Mulkey at Baylor and LSU — who had won 11 of the previous 13 national titles coming into the 2026 Final Four — Close became the first first-time coach to win a championship since Staley in 2017. The fact she had to take her Bruins through Staley’s Gamecocks was a rather appropriate coronation.
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Each of those coaches has their own strong personality, and Close is no different. But hers is one that skews less intense and instead, feels more earnest. Though Close was born and raised in Northern California, and played college basketball at UC Santa Barbara, she has a strong flavor of Midwestern folksiness to her.
Her Close-isms feel a bit like the “live, laugh, love” signs of college basketball, but you can’t argue the results that have come from this program: a 37-1 season capped by a national title.
Never get tired of doing the right thing. The grass is greener where you water it. You can’t outperform your self-image. Basketball is not who you are, it’s what you do. Sometimes you, sometimes me, always us.
That last one rang particularly true this season.
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The Bruins used a rotation of seven players, six of whom are likely first-round WNBA draftees in a week. In an age of instant gratification in college sports, often found through the transfer portal, and at a time final-year college basketball players could easily prioritize their own stats and tape over anything else, Close got each player to sacrifice a bit of their stardom for the betterment of the team.
“Every player had to sacrifice,” Close said. “How lucky am I to be part of young women that would make that hard, right choice?”
Four of the top six players could’ve easily been All-Americans elsewhere, had they played on a team that highlighted only them. Instead, the Bruins ended up with one: 6-foot-7 Lauren Betts, the fulcrum around which everything rotated for UCLA. But even Betts averaged fewer minutes and fewer shot attempts this season than she did last season.
Elsewhere, each of the top six could’ve been bigger names rather than one part of an elite committee. But they didn’t pick that. They chose the Bruins and Close. They chose an opportunity at a national title.
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“It’s just buying into the process,” Betts said. “We have everybody you could possibly want on a team — so skilled at every single position that I think the maturity to come in and sacrifice yourself and your ego and be able to put that aside for moments like these, it makes it so worth it. At the end of the day, no one’s going to really care about how much you averaged this season when you have a freaking ring around your finger.”
That kind of sacrifice simply doesn’t happen unless that mentality exists, authentically, from the top.
“She has always been a leader. … Always been selfless,” associate head coach Tony Newnan, who has known Close for 36 years, said. “She just loves people the right way.”
Ask others how they’ve seen her put others and the program first, and the list rattles on: She’s the first to jump under the bus to sort bags on road trips. She negotiated raises for all of her assistants last year after the Final Four run before negotiating her own extension in May 2025. She leaves the keys to her house with the players so they can get out of their dorms and swim in her pool while she’s on the road recruiting.
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This approach is not unlike that of former UCLA men’s basketball legend John Wooden, who coached the Bruins from 1948 to 1975 and won 10 national titles. When Close got to UCLA as an assistant in the 1990s, she began visiting his small apartment every Tuesday with other UCLA coaches to gather wisdom.
She’d bring him a pint of his favorite ice cream — Baskin-Robbins’ lemon custard or strawberry — and he’d answer every question she could conjure.
Except one.
Every time Close asked him what he would do in a specific situation she was in, he’d get quiet.
“He would always make me realize that I’m wired uniquely,” Close said. “It wasn’t about what he would do, it’s how am I wired to lead to my best?”
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Close understood that being wired to lead her best meant remaining true to herself: quotes, authenticity, pleather pants and all. Her father, who passed away in 2021 after battling vascular dementia, had instilled in her that the best thing she could do was show up for others in their greatest time of need. And as a college coach, she could show up for each of her players at a time when their lives were changing drastically.
That belief, even as the college basketball landscape has changed with name, image and likeness, revenue share and the transfer portal, has meant that her North Star has remained unchanged even if everything else is different.
In the last five years, as Close has continued to figure out ways to put her program first, part of that has been learning to become an expert in the NIL space and speaking up on the ways it impacts teams and players. Though the UCLA athletic department made a significant commitment to the program with revenue share — committing itself to a total that puts the program in the top-third of the Big Ten, per a source — Close was active in generating other NIL opportunities that could bring financial resources to the program. “It takes investment to do something like this,” UCLA athletic director Martin Jarmond said.
“In today’s college athletics, it’s everything — you have to have a coach who’s a true CEO of the institution, of the program,” Jarmond added. “This isn’t a one-year thing. She has been a head coach here for 15 years. She has poured her heart and soul into this program. These are the fruits. You work hard, you’re a good person, you recruit the right people — special things can happen.”
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On Sunday afternoon, special things did happen for UCLA.
Close felt like the Bruins would win. She went through the day with a peacefulness, and entered the game with a determination. She stood on the sideline, out-executing an opponent that has held the mantle far longer. Her final play call of the day was to tell her veteran point guard to run out the clock and suffer a shot-clock violation because the Bruins were up by so much.
When the turnover happened. Close finally removed her glasses and began to cry.
Anyone who knows Close wouldn’t have expected anything different. She wears her heart on her sleeve and feels deeply. As she looked up at the scoreboard with the seconds ticking down to the Bruins’ first national title, she exhaled and looked back at her bench.
Sometimes you, sometimes me, always us.
But tonight, UCLA.
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
UCLA Bruins, Women’s College Basketball
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