INDIANAPOLIS — UCLA spent three months atop the polls, didn’t lose a game until mid-February and was projected — twice — to be the overall No. 1 seed in the women’s NCAA Tournament.
And none of it means squat.
Still licking their wounds from the thumping they got from crosstown rival USC last weekend, the Bruins held a players-only film session early Monday morning. As they rewatched the game, they were brutally honest with themselves and one another, taking accountability and promising a performance like that won’t happen again.
It can’t. March doesn’t give do-overs.
“It was tough. There were a lot of things that we don’t want to hear, but they have to be said for the better of the team,” Lauren Betts said. “It was a good experience for all of us to say, ‘OK, let’s just have this moment, let’s get it all out now and then we can move on from this and get better.’ Because we don’t have time to focus on that game. We have bigger things coming up.
‘It’s March. You don’t have time for feelings,’ Betts added. ‘We have to win games.’
Starting Friday night, when the Bruins play Nebraska in the quarterfinals of the Big Ten tournament. UCLA beat the Cornhuskers 91-54 in their only meeting this season.
For much of the season, UCLA looked like a juggernaut. The Bruins opened with 23 consecutive wins, all but one of them by double digits. That included an early-season upset of defending national champion and then-No. 1 South Carolina.
No one had an answer for Betts, offensively or defensively, while Kiki Rice was a steady presence who could cut your heart out if opponents weren’t careful.
But something shifted with UCLA’s first loss to USC. The Bruins were lucky to get by Michigan State at home and had to claw their way back to beat Iowa. After setting the tone all season and daring opponents to match it, UCLA was now shaky.
Then came Saturday’s loss to USC in their regular season rematch.
JuJu Watkins has a way of making teams look discombobulated, but this was more than that. The Bruins started slow and out of sync, turning the ball over 11 times in the first half alone. They showed some life in the third quarter but couldn’t sustain it.
With two minutes still to play, the Trojans led by 19 and USC chants were echoing throughout Pauley Pavilion.
The loss cost UCLA the regular-season Big Ten title and dropped the Bruins to the No. 2 seed in this week’s conference tournament. It also moved them off the No. 1 seed line for the NCAA Tournament, if only temporarily.
“Obviously we didn’t get done what we wanted to get done in the Big Ten championship game,” Rice said earlier this week.
Teams used to success respond one of two ways to adversity: They either fall apart completely, or they use it as fuel to get better. The Bruins decided they were going to be the latter.
Rice and Gabriela Jaquez called the Monday morning film session, but no one fought them. The players had watched the film on their own already, so they knew where the fault lines were and came ready to own them.
The session lasted about an hour and 20 minutes, Rice said, only ending because they had a regularly-scheduled practice. But the impact was obvious immediately.
“That was probably one of our best practices in a while,” Rice said. “We felt really refreshed, got after it and competed. I think we had a new energy and a new commitment to everything we want to get done.”
There’s never any one problem or one player responsible when a team hits a rough patch, and UCLA is no different. But if there’s a theme, it’s forgetting that this is a team game and focusing on personal performances because you expect the wins will come as they always have.
“Our big thing right now is ‘we over me,’ ” UCLA coach Cori Close said. “I don’t think we ever totally lost sight of it, but I think we lost the power of it. If everybody doesn’t sacrifice for winning, winning suffers. Every single person.
“It sounds so cliché,” Close added, “but I really think that’s the difference.”
That renewed commitment is likely to get a test this weekend. Apologies to the rest of the Big Ten, but USC and UCLA are clearly the best teams in the conference and are likely to meet in Sunday’s tournament championship game.
The Bruins wouldn’t have it any other way.
“We still have a lot to prove,” Rice said. “I’d definitely love to see them again. Whether it’s in the Big Ten tournament or the NCAA Tournament, I definitely want another shot at them.”
UCLA was the best team this season. It took a loss to remind the Bruins of that.
Follow USA TODAY Sports columnist Nancy Armour on social media @nrarmour.