SPOKANE, Wash. — At a certain point, you had to feel sorry for the Ole Miss defense. The team that prides itself on suffocating opposing offenses and making it difficult to even dribble the ball, let alone move it in the half court, was at a loss.
The defense that usually forces other teams into second-guessing themselves was instead faced with the biggest riddle of all: How do you solve a problem like Lauren Betts?
On Friday night, there were no answers.
Betts scored 31 points, her second straight game clearing the 30-point barrier and the fourth time this season, and added 10 rebounds and three blocks. Her efficiency was preposterous, as she made 15 of 16 field goal attempts, the lone miss coming as the clock wound down at the end of the second quarter.
“That’s insane,” Betts said when she heard her stat line after the game. “Honestly, I feel like ever since our loss to (USC on March 1), I’ve just completely changed my mindset going forward, just being aggressive no matter what.”
Her performance propelled the top-seeded Bruins past No. 5 seed Ole Miss 76-62 to set up an Elite Eight meeting Sunday against No. 2 seed LSU.
The first plan of attack in the Sweet 16 for Betts: Establish a deep enough seal so that she could finish without a dribble over or through her defender. If her catch came a little bit farther from the basket, then a simple post move and turn over her shoulder would get the job done.
If Ole Miss managed to push her out far enough from the basket where she couldn’t back down from her defender, Betts would go out on the perimeter and set a screen for her ballhandler, clearing the runway for a drive to the basket, a tactic that junior point guard Kiki Rice used to great effect.
Betts’ teammates started connecting on jumpers after halftime, but that success from long range didn’t cause the Bruins to deviate from the overall plan.
“We’re not going to stop going to something that keeps working,” teammate Gabriela Jaquez said. “So they couldn’t stop her, keep throwing it to her. Don’t fix what’s not broken. Keep doing that, and we did, and it worked.”
Every basket was somehow more demoralizing than the last for Ole Miss. On one possession in the second quarter, the Rebels successfully denied the entry pass to Betts from the wing, forcing UCLA to reverse the ball. Angela Dugalić hit Jaquez flashing into the high post, with the goal of setting up a high-low pass, but Ole Miss stayed glued to Betts and Jaquez airballed a runner, leaving three seconds on the shot clock. Yet somehow, Betts recovered the rebound and got a layup in before time expired.
“She is everything as advertised,” Rebels coach Yolett McPhee-McCuin said. “Every time they got in a bind, they threw it to her. That is a luxury.”
For as easy as Betts made the game for her teammates, she made scoring as difficult for Ole Miss. The Rebels shot 32.4 percent from the field, their second-lowest mark of the season, and made 12 of 33 layups. They shot 2 of 13 when Betts was the primary defender, per ESPN Stats and Info, and that doesn’t include the shots they passed out of when faced with the possibility of confronting Betts at the rim.
Her last block came on a fast-break opportunity when Jaquez threw a bad pass and Betts got back to reject KK Deans at the cup.
Setting aside one play when she brought the ball down on a double-team and got tied up, Betts made the right decision no matter the situation. The Bruins’ philosophy is to get Betts the ball and good things will happen. She rewarded that approach time and again.
Even as Betts has put together an All-American season (the first first-team selection for UCLA), her performance Friday turned heads. The efficiency and the end-to-end dominance resulted in a historic output.
Another 30-point, 10-rebound performance for @laurenbetts12!
She’s now 1 of 3 players to have multiple 30-10 games in the NCAA Tournament in the last 25 seasons.
— Big Ten Women’s Basketball (@B1Gwbball) March 29, 2025
The Bruins were lucky to be seeded in a regional that doesn’t have many big, traditional centers. But Betts is powering through defenses that are built to stop her in different ways. Teams that spread the floor and make her defend on the perimeter are discovering that she can move her feet and contest jumpers. Those who run heavy amounts of screen-and-roll realize that Betts envelops the ballhandler and stops the action before the pass.
And teams that have what they consider to be a dominant post inside learn that Betts is on an entirely different level. Combining her natural talent with an insatiable work ethic and a renewed mindset to own her greatness has made for an incomparable player.
“She’s now done all the work in this offseason to now be equipped to be that good,” UCLA coach Cori Close said. “Now she’s equipped from the inside out to sustain that. She’s just an amazing player on both sides of the ball, and she makes everybody else around her better.”
As Betts’ ceiling rises, she is elevating the Bruins’ prospects in the process. UCLA is in its first Elite Eight in seven years with a chance to advance to its first Final Four in program history.
“She is a very tough matchup,” McPhee-McCuin said. “UCLA looks like a team that could win a national championship. Who’s going to stop her?”
(Photo: Steph Chambers / Getty Images)
