LOS ANGELES, Ca – Right at 5 p.m. PT, ESPN’s Selection Sunday show came on across the big screen TV placed inside the Mo Ostin Basketball Center, and the entire room went quiet. Within the first five minutes of the show, as the UConn Huskies were announced as the NCAA Tournament’s No. 1 overall seed, the room erupted into a chorus of boos from the assembled UCLA fans and personnel in attendance.
Later on in the show, in what might have been a Freudian Slip, ESPN analyst Chiney Ogwumike referred to UCLA as the No. 1 overall seed before quickly correcting herself. The mistake elicited a few raised eyebrows and chuckles from the UCLA players.
When the show was over, the assembled crowd began to file out, taking their last sips of their drinks while wishing the Bruins good luck in the tournament.
A few stragglers remained, eager to observe the final event of the day, a press conference featuring UCLA head coach Cori Close and senior leaders Kiki Rice and Angela Dugalic.
And when Close picked up the mic, she assured those in attendance that seeding was the farthest thing on the team’s mind coming into the day.
”People have been asking me, do I care about the No. 1 overall seed. I really don’t,” Close said. “I really think it has no bearing on where we’re going. We just care about the next matchup ahead of us. The bottom line for us is that I just really want us to keep a present mindset. How do we play our best basketball for that and earn another day.”
Regardless of seeding, the Bruins come into the tournament as one of the favorites to win the national championship. Judging solely off strength of schedule and record against top-ranked teams, UCLA is ahead of the pack.
The Bruins have 19 Quad 1 wins this season, while UConn has nine. It was a stat that was brought up during the selection broadcast, also generating quite a bit of puzzled reactions from the crowd.
But as Close has preached to her team all season, the outside chatter and outside opinions do not matter.
“We need to shut out any noise that is not in line with our mission and what we’re trying to do. I think so much of what I learned in the past is how to narrow the focus, to tighten the circle, who we’re with, what we fill our minds with,” Close said. “The battle is how do you stay present, focused in the midst of that. I think we’re very level. There’s a very business like approach to how we’re going to attack this. But I feel more equipped as a leader, let alone them as players, of how we’re going to handle this next round.”
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But it’s one thing to hear that message coming from the head coach; it’s another thing to have the players themselves reiterate it and get one another to buy into it. And for Close, she’s been fortunate to have a group of senior leaders to keep the team focused on what truly matters.
Although it is a major cliche, the old mantra, ‘taking it day-by-day,’ is sometimes the best. And that’s exactly what the Bruins have been preaching to each other.
”Honestly, the biggest thing is just taking it day-by-day and focusing on how can we get better each day. Each day in practice, each day we play a game and just really kind of letting everything come to us,’ Rice said. “This week, I feel like we’ve competed in practice and we’ve gotten better, especially these last two days.”
Plenty of questions for the Bruins during their press conference focused on UCLA’s failure in the Final Four last season, and what the team has learned from that run. But for UCLA, not looking back into the past and paying attention to only what’s in front of them also has to do with blocking the outside noise.
”I think you do build on, obviously, what happened last year. But then again, once we started this season, this is a new team, a new group and having that mindset, we’ll use the lessons that we do take from last year and apply them,” Rice said. “How can we use them to get better, but also at the same time, you can’t live in the past. Living in the past holds us back from reaching our full potential as a group this year … I think we’ve done a really good job of staying present this year.”
While the team certainly felt the disappointment from the crowd when UConn was revealed as the No. 1 overall seed, it was important to reassure the fans that there are bigger issues at hand over what essentially comes down to bragging rights.
”The biggest thing was just excitement that we could all be here to celebrate this day together,” Dugalic said. “The No. 1 overall seed or whatever seed we got, we weren’t really worried about that. I don’t think, with this team, there was much conversation about what seed we would get. And I think that speaks a lot of the maturity of this team, maturity of this group. And we just kind of keep the main thing, the main thing, which is getting better.”
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