How did you solve a problem like 6-7 Lauren Betts of the UCLA? Ole Miss could not. Can anyone?
Spokane, Wash. – At one point, you had to sorrow for the defense of Ole Miss. The team that is proud to suffocate opponent offenses and make it difficult even dribbling the ball, not to mention moving it in half a field, it was at a loss.
The defense that usually forces the other teams to harden second time was instead faced with the greatest riddle of all: how does a problem like Lauren Betts solve?
On Friday evening there were no answers.
Betts scored 31 points, his second consecutive game eliminating the 30 -point barrier and the fourth time this season and added 10 rebounds and three blocks. His efficiency was absurd, while he made 15 of the 16 attempts of Field Goal, the lonely young lady arrived while the clock went down to the end of the second quarter.
“It’s crazy,” Betts said when he heard his statat line after the game. “Honestly, I feel like our loss A (USC on March 1), I just changed my mentality going on, being only aggressive, it doesn’t matter what.”
His performance pushed the Bruins with the highest seed beyond seed n. 5 Ole Miss 76-62 to organize a meeting of eight elite Sunday against the seed LSU n. 2.
The first attachment floor in the Sweet 16 for Betts: establish a fairly deep seal so that it can end without dribbling above or through its defender. If his capture came a little further from the basket, then a simple post move and turn over his shoulder would have done the job.
If Ole Miss had managed to push her far enough from the basket where she could not return to her defender, Betts came out on the perimeter and stared at a screen for her sphere, erasing the catwalk for a journey to the basket, a tactic that the junior guard Kiki Rice was used with great effect.
Betts’ teammates started connecting to the bridges after the interval, but that long -haul success did not make the Bruins deviate from the general plan.
“We will not stop going to something that continues to work,” said teammate Gabriela Jaquez. “So they couldn’t stop it, continue to launch it. Do not correct what is not broken. He continues to do so, and we did it, and he worked.”
Each basket was in some way more demoralizing than the last for Ole Miss. On a possession in the second quarter, the rebels successfully denied the passage of entrance to Betts from the wing, forcing the UCLA to reverse the ball. Angela Dugalić hit Jaquez who flashed in the high pole, with the aim of creating a high-low passage, but Ole Miss was glued to Betts and Jaquez made a dependent ball, leaving three seconds on the clock. Yet in some way, Betts recovered the rebound and got a layup before time expired.
“It’s all as advertised,” said rebellious coach Yolett McPhee-McCuin. “Every time they have tied, if they thrown it. It’s a luxury.”
Although Betts played the game for his teammates, he made the score difficult for Ole Miss. The rebels shot 32.4 percent from the field, their second lowest score of the season, and made 12 out of 33 layups. They shot 2 of 13 when Betts was the main defender, for ESPN statistics and information, and this does not include the blows from which they came out in front of the possibility of facing Betts on the edge.
His last block arrived in a quick opportunity when Jaquez launched a bad passage and Betts returned to refuse the Deans Kk to the Cup.
Putting aside a game when he lowered the ball in a double team and tied up, Betts made the right decision regardless of the situation. The philosophy of the Bruins is to obtain Betts the ball and good things will happen. He rewarded that approach several times.
Although Betts put together an All-American season (the first selection of the first team for the UCLA), his performance on Friday shot his head. Efficiency and end-to-end domain led to historical production.
Another performance of 30 points and 10 rebounds for @Laurenbetts12!
Now it is 1 of the 3 players to get more 30-10 games in the NCAA tournament in the last 25 seasons.
📺: @Eespn X @Uclawbb pic.twitter.com/mdozhmajcv
– Big Ten Women’s Basketball (@b1gwbball) March 29, 2025
The Bruins were lucky to be sown in a regional that does not have many large traditional centers. But Betts is feeding the defenses built to stop it in different ways. The teams that widen the floor and make it defend on the perimeter are discovering that it can move the feet and contest the jumpers. Those who manage heavy quantities of screen and Roll realize that Betts wraps the ball and interrupts the action before the passage.
And the teams that have what they consider a dominant post inside, learn that Betts is at a completely different level. By combining his natural talent with an ethics of insatiable work and a renewed mentality to own his greatness he created an incomparable player.
“Now he has done all the work in this offseason to be equipped to be so good,” said the UCLA Coir Cour Coach. “It is now equipped from the inside to support him. It is only an extraordinary player on both sides of the ball, and makes all the others around her better.”
While Betts’ ceiling increases, it is raising the bruins prospects in the process. The UCLA is in its first Elite eight in seven years with the possibility of advancing at its first final in the history of the program.
“It’s a very hard matchup,” McPhee-McCuin said. “The UCLA looks like a team that could win a national championship. Who will stop it?”
(Photo: Steph Chamber / Getty Images)
