When teams are underperforming in the first half of games, it usually requires some form of halftime speech or pep talk from the head coach — something to motivate the team and get them back on track. It could be gentle or it could be more forceful, depending on the personality. But UCLA head coach Cori Close has often found herself to be an observer rather than a participant.
Take the team’s come-from-behind win against Duke that powered the Bruins to their second straight Final Four appearance, for example. UCLA trailed by as many as ten points in the first half and looked out of sync by the time the halftime buzzer sounded.
But as has been the case all season long, when Close got back to the locker room, her team was already deep in discussion on what needed to change in the second half.
“That is truly what I’ve leaned on all year … Going into that locker room, I’m talking to myself going, ‘they got this, be solid. Stay really steady for them,’” Close said following the win.
Coming out of halftime, one of the key differences was the aggressiveness from sixth-year forward Angela Dugalic. She had nine of her 15 points in the second half, powering her way to the basket and bullying the smaller Duke frontline on multiple possessions.
Dugalic has continued to find her voice this season as one of the Bruins’ leaders, and she’s been instrumental in some of these halftime meetings, just as she was on Sunday.
“We’re able to call each other up and out on what we have to fix, and I think that’s a great quality of our team. No one takes it personally,” Dugalic said following the win. “If I need Lauren [Betts] to do something better, she’s willing to take accountability for that and vice versa. That goes for everyone on my team.”
While Close did end up saying something before the second half began, her little pep talk to herself about trusting her players and keeping a calm demeanor also played a role in the team maintaining composure.
”When Cori came in, she was just super steady, and I think that gave us a sense of calm. We still were pretty neutral, we understood that the first half wasn’t a good representation of how we want to play basketball,” Dugalic said. “But Cori came in, and what she said is … how do we stick back to our values and stay neutral.”
One of the things Dugalic recalled asking her teammates in the locker room at halftime was to do a better job of setting the tone on the defensive end.
“We try to anchor ourselves on defense and we knew that wasn’t a great depiction of how we want to play defense. I think that we just needed to adjust,” Dugalic said. “And I even told the guards that I need you guys to get through the screen so we can properly help you guys and get back to our player.”
This isn’t the first time in the NCAA Tournament that UCLA has needed players to lead a halftime adjustment. In the Bruins’ opening round game against Cal Baptist, the team did not come out with the type of intensity and effort that one might expect when a No. 1 seed is squaring off against a No. 16 seed.
UCLA was only up by eight points after the first quarter, and they only outscored Cal Baptist by two points, 21-19, in the second quarter. And back then, it was Dugalic who helped lead the charge in the locker room.
“It was made very clear to us that we needed to do a better job, and that was before the coaches came in,” Dugalic had said after the win against Cal Baptist. “We just took accountability of what we needed to fix.”
While UCLA has cultivated a culture where each player feels comfortable holding their teammates accountable when necessary, it’s also a culture where players are able to hold themselves to account. They’re able to recognize what they need to do better as individuals and they know how to ask for support from the rest of the team.
That’s exactly what Lauren Betts did at halftime. She knew she wasn’t playing up to her standards, and with her senior year on the line, she propelled herself to a dominant second half in which she took advantage over and over again of the smaller Duke defenders in the post while also shutting off the paint defensively and on the glass.
“I think I was just pretty mad. I just didn’t like how the first half happened and I know that I could have been a lot more aggressive,” Betts recalled after the win. “I think going into the locker room, I was just pretty certain that I wanted to win this game. I spoke to all the girls and held people accountable and I think I just came out with the mentality, like, I’m just not gonna lose. So whether that’s me scoring or blocking shots or just getting the extra rebounds, I was willing to do whatever the team needed.”
It would be remiss of Close to not say anything at all at halftime. While it’s a bonus to have players that can hash things out amongst themselves, a little perspective often is needed from the head coach.
But Close has learned to allow them to confer amongst themselves first, and then she’s more than happy to pick up the baton wherever it has been left off.
“I’ll be like, ‘okay, what have you guys talked about, what have we covered here?’ And then I had like two or three things that I thought were important. But first, I listened,” Close said. “I think when you have a mature group and when your culture is pretty intact in terms of the values, it’s better for me to be quick to listen and slow to speak. And usually when I speak, I will have better things to say.”
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