On April 5, 2026, UCLA cut down the nets in Phoenix. Six players went to the WNBA. Now Cori Close is building what comes next.
The 2025-26 UCLA Women’s Basketball season ended with a 37-1 record, the first undefeated Big Ten season in program history, and the school’s first NCAA Women’s National Championship. Eight days after that championship game, six Bruins heard their names called on WNBA Draft night, five of them in the first round, the most first-round selections from a single program in WNBA draft history.
What Cori Close built in Westwood produced the most decorated draft class women’s college basketball has ever seen from one school. Now she is building the next version of it.
The Scale of What Departed
The six players who went to the WNBA were not supporting pieces on the championship roster. They were the engine of it, and the numbers make the scope of the rebuild clear.
Lauren Betts was the centerpiece, averaging 17.1 points and 8.8 rebounds per game on 58.2% shooting. Kiki Rice anchored the backcourt at 14.9 points, 5.9 rebounds, and 4.3 assists per game. Gabriela Jaquez averaged 13.4 points and 5.5 rebounds while connecting on 39% of her three-point attempts.
Gianna Kneepkens provided elite floor spacing at 42.9% from three and 12.8 points per game. Angela Dugalić averaged 9.0 points and 5.7 rebounds while embodying the team-first culture that made the whole group function. Charlisse Leger-Walker quietly led the team with 5.6 assists per game, her vision the connective tissue that kept the offense in rhythm all season.
Combined, those six players accounted for 2,858 points, 1,240 rebounds, and 759 assists, which translates to roughly 90% of team scoring, 85% of rebounds, and 92% of assists from the championship season. There is no minimizing what Close has to replace. The interesting part of this story is how she is going about it.
The Foundation That Remains
Not every meaningful piece of the championship team is gone. Sienna Betts, Lauren’s younger sister, earned Big Ten All-Freshman honors in her debut season despite a lower-leg injury that limited her to 28 games. When healthy, she averaged 6.0 points and 4.0 rebounds per game on 52.9% shooting, and her development trajectory heading into her sophomore season is one of the more interesting subplots on the roster.
Timea Gardiner also returns after missing the entire 2025-26 season with a knee injury. The fifth-year senior shot 39.5% from three and made 64 threes in 2024-25, which gives Close a proven perimeter option stepping back onto a completely different team than the one she left. Sophomores Lena Bilic and Christina Karamouzi and redshirt junior Amanda Muse each return in expanded roles, providing continuity within the program culture even as the roster reshapes around them.
The Transfer Class
ESPN ranked Cori Close’s portal class as the fifth biggest winner of the 2026 offseason. The players she landed speak for themselves.
Elina Aarnisalo returns to Westwood after a year at North Carolina, where she shot 40.4% from three-point range and averaged 10.2 points and 2.9 assists. Addy Brown arrives from Iowa State with a profile that goes considerably beyond scoring: 11.9 points, 8.6 rebounds, and 5.2 assists per game give Close a creative playmaker capable of filling some of the creation that Leger-Walker and Rice provided.
Donovyn Hunter played all 38 games at Big 12 Regular Season Champion TCU, averaging 10.2 points on 45.7% shooting, and brings the veteran backcourt experience the roster needs immediately. Bonnie Deas arrives from Arkansas with 10.2 points and 9.0 rebounds per game as a true freshman and three years of eligibility remaining, giving Close a durable interior option whose best basketball is almost certainly ahead of her. KK Bransford rounds out the class after averaging 7.4 points per game off the bench at Notre Dame in 2025-26.
The International Freshmen
Cori Close has built one of the strongest international recruiting pipelines in women’s college basketball over the past several years, and the 2026 class adds two more names to that lineage. Somto Okafor arrives from Barcelona, where she averaged 12.5 points and 6.5 rebounds per game leading the Spain U19 National Team at the FIBA U19 Women’s Basketball World Cup.
Lina Jerkovic, a point guard from Slovenia, averaged 10.4 points, 5.0 assists, and 4.7 rebounds across seven games at the FIBA U18 Women’s EuroBasket in July 2025. Both players will compete for rotation minutes from day one, and the international experience they carry into Westwood is consistent with what Close has valued throughout her time building this program.
What 2026-27 Is About?
The question facing UCLA going into 2026-27 is one that only programs that have genuinely built something real ever have to answer: how do you sustain the standard after the players who set it have moved on? Cori Close’s answer has been consistent across her 15 years in Westwood.
You recruit the culture first and the production follows. The incoming class reflects that. Brown’s playmaking, Deas’s physicality, Aarnisalo’s shooting, and the development of Sienna Betts and Gardiner all suggest a team that will look different from the 2025-26 champions but operate with the same foundational commitments that made that team what it was.
UCLA is not defending a championship next season. They are building toward the next one.
All statistics sourced from ShotTracker Scout. Learn more at shottracker.com.
