INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. — With the current Big Ten schedule format of playing all teams once and one team twice, programs do not get many chances to make up for a loss later in the calendar. Until the Big Ten Tournament, that is.
The No. 1 UCLA Bruins have given every team in the Big Ten that feeling of wanting one back, and Sunday’s tournament finale featured the next attempt when the No. 2 Iowa Hawkeyes lined up against the Bruins.
It started well for the Hawkeyes when guard Taylor Stremlow hit the first basket of the game after 56 seconds. Iowa had a 3-point lead, and the crowd prepared for what they thought was an exciting rematch — it was never close again.
UCLA broke all sorts of records in its 96-45 victory, including several previously held by the Hawkeyes themselves. The Bruins’ 63.5% field-goal percentage was higher than Iowa’s 62.1% against the Ohio State Buckeyes at the 2023 title game, which ended 105-72.
UCLA’s 51-point margin of victory also eclipsed Iowa’s 33-point victory in that same 2023 Big Ten title game, powered by guard Caitlin Clark and forward Hannah Stuelke. The drubbing was a swap from pride to infamy, orchestrated by the far-and-away best team in the Big Ten.
The Bruins had six players hit double-digit scoring, and even when head coach Cori Close swapped out most of her starting lineup in the fourth quarter, UCLA hit its last nine shots of the game.
This feat is the product of a team with extensive experience. Guard Kiki Rice, the tournament’s Most Outstanding Player, had 15 points and eight assists. Guard Gianna Kneepkens led the game with 19 points on 4-for-8 shooting from beyond the arc. Forward/guard Gabriela Jaquez had 12 points, five rebounds and four assists.
Oddly enough, the complete team performance did not include standout production from the Big Ten Player and Defensive Player of the Year, Lauren Betts. The senior had 10 points on 5-for-9 shooting, four rebounds and three assists, all below her season averages.
Despite this, UCLA outscored the Hawkeyes by 35 when Lauren Betts was on the floor, the third-highest in the game and the best on a per-minute basis among the five starters.
All six of the Bruins who played at least 20 minutes in the game are in their final year of eligibility, giving this UCLA team a sense of finality. If they do not win a national championship this year, what version of a UCLA team could possibly be better?
Freshman forward Sienna Betts showed a glimpse on Sunday.
“Coach Cori [Close] came to the bench in the fourth quarter, she’s like, ‘This is Sienna’s world, and we’re just living in it,” Lauren Betts told reporters.”
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An injury in the summer took the top-three 2025 recruit out of most of the team’s offseason preparation. This added to the already difficult adjustment for many top recruits: going from being the best player and logging as many minutes as you want at the amateur level, to coming off the bench for a program with a completed veteran core already in place.
Sienna Betts has made 22 appearances since she made her Bruins debut, far fewer than a recruit of that stature had envisioned before the injury.
“It’s obviously really, really hard. I’m not going to sugarcoat it,” Sienna Betts told Dream B1G. “But I think when I get older, and I look back at this, I know this is the next step of making me a better person and a better player.”
That better player was on display in the first quarter. Betts hit the layup that gave the Bruins their first double-digit lead. Iowa center Ava Heiden then had a bucket inside on the next possession, which Sienna Betts countered by rattling off six of the last eight points of the quarter. By the end of the first half, the forward who entered Sunday with 6.3 points and 1.1 assists per game had 8 points and three assists.
By the end of the game, Sienna Betts had matched her single-game highs with 14 points, seven rebounds and five assists. That all three career highs were matched in the same game is what stands out most. Today, the well-rounded big showed that when her sister leaves, the paint is in good hands for Close’s Bruins.
“Honestly, I think I just came into this like it’s not like any other game,” Sienna Betts told The IX Sports, “and freshman year is hard, and you just stack days and stack days and keep working, keep working, you know? And it’s gonna work out eventually, if you just keep … going hard. I don’t know when it was gonna happen, but I knew eventually, if I kept working, that it would show — and it just happened to be today.”
When Close said it was “Sienna’s world”, it was late in the fourth quarter when the game was already more than out of Iowa’s hands. Sienna Betts scored six points in the last 6:07 of the fourth quarter, including the final shot that brought the record-breaking margin to 51 points.
There were even times when Sienna played alongside her sister Lauren, a way to match up against the Iowa interior duo of Heiden and Stuelke. The Hawkeyes had little answer when it was just Lauren Betts on the floor, so when Sienna came in to support, the disparity only got wider. UCLA’s 44 points in the paint nearly matched Iowa’s 45 total points.
“I’m just really proud of [Sienna Betts],” Lauren Betts said, “because I know this season, it’s hard being a freshman on this team with these elite players. And she continues to stay confident and ask for the ball and want to get shots, and that’s the type of energy that we need. She went and she did her job, and her attitude has just been so amazing.”
Sienna Betts played only 18 minutes, but some came early in the game, and it was still a Big Ten Tournament championship regardless of the margin by the end. That experience is invaluable, and now the freshman takes it into the NCAA Tournament, where the Bruins are likely to receive the second No. 1 seed, but have a resume for No. 1 overall consideration.
Either way, the continued rise of Sienna Betts bodes well for the Bruins’ chances at a long tournament run; not as a key starter, but as quality depth and extra size for strong interior matchups. That is good news for UCLA and bad news for everyone else.
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