The All-American center for one of the nation’s best teams has the ball, and her mother knows what she won’t do. Michelle Betts has watched her daughter, Lauren, play a million basketball games in a thousand gyms, and she cannot recall a single time when Lauren drove to the basket from the top of the key.
Michelle knows Lauren can do it. Lauren knows Lauren can do it. But Lauren can also make three-pointers, and in almost 2,000 collegiate minutes, she has never taken one. Some athletes try to prove people wrong. Betts fears proving them right. If she misses an outside shot, or dribbles off her foot, it will bring back the feeling that haunted her throughout childhood:
People think that all I am is tall.
Betts was 6' 5" when she entered high school. She is 6' 7" now, in her junior year at UCLA. Strangers seem to think a woman’s eyes and ears don’t work at that altitude. The stares, like she can’t see them. The jokes, like she can’t hear them. People take selfies with her in the background, as if she is a waterfall. They put their hand on their heads, then raise it to the top of hers. They follow her as she walks down the street—like that’s not creepy.
When Lauren was a kid, traveling to tournaments, there would be a timeout or halftime of another game, and her teammates would walk from the stands out onto the court and take some shots. Lauren never did. People were watching. Wherever she is, there they gawk.
You think beating South Carolina is tough? Try changing the facial expression of everyone who looks at you. Hell, Betts can’t even control her own. When she gets down on herself in practice, her face calls timeout and announces it: “I’m like, ‘O.K.! Everyone’s looking at me! I’m O.K.! Everyone’s … staring.’ ” She is the nation’s best center and its worst bluffer.
After recruiting services tabbed Betts as the top player in her recruiting class, the compliment pained her: “It was just really hard for me to hear why I shouldn’t be No. 1 my entire high school career.” When she has a disappointing game, the word she uses, again and again, is embarrassed. The catastrophe is not just that she played poorly; it is that people saw her play poorly. Betts is the best player on the NCAA tournament’s No. 1 overall seed—she rarely plays poorly. But what does that have to do with anything?
“I don’t see people say anything bad about her, you know what I mean?” says UCLA guard Kiki Rice, a friend of Betts since their high school days. “A lot of it is created in her own head.”
Betts’s problem is that her definition of “anything bad” is literal.
“When people don’t see me as, like, almost perfect sometimes, I’m like, ‘Oh, my God,’ ” she says.
And so here they are, packed into an Indianapolis arena, staring at Lauren Betts with nine minutes left in the Big Ten tournament’s championship game. She has tried to avoid this. She gestured for Rice to pass to Janiah Barker in the post, but Rice held onto the ball. Betts then floated to the top of the key and called for the ball.
UCLA leads USC, 54–52.
Betts looks to pass. Nobody is open. The shot clock is winding down.
Mothers sometimes spin tall tales, but Michelle speaks the truth. Lauren cannot remember ever doing what she does right now, with the whole sport watching—a simple basketball act that tells you how far she has come and how far UCLA can go: She dribbles from the top of the key toward the basket.
In the spring of 2011, in her last moments before being introduced as UCLA’s head basketball coach, Cori Close worried about disappointing a dead man. His name was John Wooden. He had died the year before, after winning 10 national championships and setting an example for anybody who was looking for one.
Close was looking for one. She started visiting Wooden when she was a UCLA assistant from 1993 to ’95, and she kept going back after she left for UC Santa Barbara and even Florida State. Close came to see her meetings with Wooden the way she sees her attendance at church on Sundays: “It’s really how that church and that experience affects your choices Monday through Saturday.” Every time Close met with Wooden, she left feeling closer to being the coach she wanted to be.
“It wasn’t what he told me,” she says. “He always used to say that ‘the best lessons are caught, not taught,’ and that applied to me, too. It’s what I caught by just being around him … his principles lined up with his choices, and his words lined up with his actions. He was my guiding light of hope that you didn’t have to demean people. You didn’t have to swear ’em up, f-bomb them up and down, to demand excellence.
“I’ve always been mad at coaches, because you ask coaches: What percentage of the game do you think is mental? And almost every coach is going to say 70, 80, 90%. And then I’ll say, O.K., last week’s practices, what percentage of your practice was built on giving them the tools to grow mentally? And it’s crickets, right? Silence.”
Close views those crickets as a plague. After every practice, the Bruins “touch feet,” gathering in a circle for a ritual they call “What Went Well.” Anyone can speak. Close just wants them to leave the worst practice moments in the gym and carry the best ones out the door. Then they eat lunch together.
“Most women think they’re not as good as they are,” Close says. “Most men think they’re better than they are. I want to do everything I can to have the right loop in their head.”
For a century, American coaches thrived through mind games and fear. The model produced a lot of championships, but it’s dying. Thanks to name, image and likeness opportunities, Close’s stars make more money than she does. They can transfer anywhere and play immediately. They are in constant contact with the outside world, which means they are intensely aware they have critics and they know they have options. They’re not going to stick with a fiefdom.
A few years ago, Close watched her players climb into the cargo holds of charter planes or buses to get their bags, and she thought: I’m 5' 6". Why should these tall people have to fold their bodies into these small compartments when I can do it for them? The only reason for Close not to climb in there is because she is the head coach, and that might be the worst reason of all: It reinforces a power dynamic Close works hard to dismantle. Now, wherever UCLA travels, you can find its head coach under the bus, fishing out luggage.
Close’s program is thriving because it is a collegiate model in a professional world: “If I’m feeling comfortable on either side, I’m probably not in a balanced place.” She wants players to make big money, but not to view playing for her as a job.
“Most women think they’re not as good as they are. Most men think they’re better than they are. I want to do everything I can to have the right loop in their head.”Cori Close, UCLA coach
At UCLA, here is what’s playing on a loop:
You need to talk to yourself rather than listen to yourself.
All of you is welcome here.
Guard what you put in your mind like you guard your phone or your car.
Wounds are deeper than convictions, and if you don’t deal with your wounds, they overpower your convictions.
And sometimes, words from John Wooden himself:
The biggest form of partiality is to treat every person the same.
Close keeps a shovel and a broom in her office. The shovel reminds her to dig below the surface. The broom reminds her that leading is not about being above the players; it is about serving them. When Betts arrived in Westwood in 2023, she looked at Close like the coach might pick up the broom and ride it.
“I could tell in her eyes that when I would speak, I was a trigger,” Close says. “Honestly, it hurt my feelings a little bit, because I thought it was maybe a reflection of our relationship. But what I realized is: When I was talking, she was looking at me, but she was hearing me as Tara.”
Tara VanDerveer is one of the most successful basketball coaches of all time. She led Stanford to three national championships and the 1996 U.S. Olympic team to a gold medal. Playing for her was Betts’s dream until she did it. A month into her Stanford career, Betts flew to see her family at one of her sister Sienna’s basketball tournaments in Southern California, got off the plane, and bawled. From there, things got worse.
“She clearly seemed to think that people there didn’t believe in her at all,” Michelle says. “And not only that, she seemed to think they didn’t really care about her at all.”
There were exceptions. Just not enough of them. Betts says, “When your confidence is stripped away from you, it completely changes the way you play.” Freshmen usually need time to adjust to college, and Betts felt burdened by expectations before she got there, so blaming her unhappiness entirely on Stanford is reductive. But the way Stanford responded is mystifying.
Michelle says VanDerveer has not spoken to her since October 2021, when Betts was still in high school. Lauren’s father, Andy, says he spoke to VanDerveer once during Lauren’s lone Cardinal season, when he requested a meeting. Meanwhile, Stanford coaches kept recruiting Sienna: They sat in the front row at her tournaments, hoping to impress the kid, while Michelle watched them from across the gym and seethed. By December, Michelle was telling Lauren, “You’re gonna hold on tight, and you’re gonna get through the year and you’re gonna get the hell out of here.”
Sports Illustrated informed Stanford we were writing that Betts was unhappy with her experience, and wanted to give VanDerveer a chance to offer her perspective; she declined.
When the season ended, and Betts put her name in the transfer portal, she was “terrified” at how far she had fallen, and how fast: “I didn’t really want to talk to anybody. I just wanted to leave Stanford.” Andy says, “She’s telling us. ‘I don’t feel like I can play any more at this level.’ She was just miserable.”
Her parents planned visits to UConn and Notre Dame, but Betts wasn’t interested in being wooed. She wanted to feel protected. Betts visited UCLA and committed on the spot.
Nine months after Betts was the nation’s top basketball recruit, Close asked her: “On a scale of one to 10, how would you rate your confidence?”
Betts said, “Maybe a three.”
Betts wanted to take the summer off. But USA Basketball wanted her to try out for the FIBA AmeriCup team, and her parents thought she needed a positive basketball experience, to restore her confidence. Andy says now: “We had to really, really push her to play.”
At the end of her first AmeriCup practice, Betts walked over to her parents in tears and said, “I hate it and I don’t want to be here.” She proceeded to make the team and play well, and the U.S. won the silver medal, but Betts saw that as another failure: “We were expected to win a gold medal and we didn’t.” What Betts really wanted—what she really needed—was not a gold medal. She needed time to take care of herself, and she needed professional help.
She went to UCLA, where Close helped her find a therapist and her new teammates and coaches welcomed her. But the Stanford trauma lurked inside, unresolved.
Coaches sometimes refer to their programs as families. At UCLA, the players say it.
“Most of the coaches on staff don’t have kids,” Rice says. “In a way, we feel like we’re their daughters. When I was being recruited, a lot of coaches say that kind of stuff, but just from talking to my friends at other schools, the reality is different when you get there. With Coach Cori, how she kind of portrayed herself and how she portrayed the program and recruiting have been very consistent with what has been the reality.”
Close, who is 53, says, “I sacrificed a lot. I thought I’d be married. I thought I’d have kids. But I’m proud of that, and I’m content with that, as long as it’s purposeful. And I just don’t want to lose that. Otherwise, I might as well go coach in the WNBA.”
Most schools raise most of their NIL funding through collectives, which then distribute it to athletes based on their value to the team. Close says 90% of her players’ NIL income comes from either legitimate licensing deals or collective payments for community-service work.
The players are still getting paid. But Close does not want them to view college basketball as transactional. It is educational, it is experiential, and it is preparatory. As Close discussed investing over lunch with guard Charlisse Leger-Walker recently, she thought: I don’t think this would have happened five years ago.
“Women, for whatever reason, haven’t been taught to think that way, to be financially independent,” Close says. “There’s a reason that most NBA players are bankrupt five years after their careers are done. That collective piece, for me, is an example of the dangers of that in college.”
Rice says Close spends a lot of time “mothering us.” But that brings tension, too: Schools do not hang banners celebrating chicken soup and forehead kisses.
Betts arrived at UCLA and immediately showed why every top program and USA Basketball wanted her. In her first 15 games at UCLA, Betts made 71% of her shots and her team went 14–1.
After coming off the bench at Stanford, Betts looked like a new player. Or her old self.
She was neither.
“I carried everything from my freshman year into last year,” she says. “You think that you’re not thinking about it, but … your body remembers it, your mind remembers it. There could be one thing in practice that just kind of triggers everything from my freshman year. There’d be certain days where I’d look at myself in the mirror, and all I’d see is Freshman Lauren … exhausted in all senses. Mentally, physically, tired. Very doubtful of what was to come.”
Sophomore Lauren tried to coax Freshman Lauren out of her head. This is a new program. You are with different people. You’re a lot safer than you felt before. But then she would make a mistake and think, “I don’t know if my coach is gonna believe in me anymore.”
The gap between Betts’s performance and her self-perception was so large that she fell into it. While Betts worried Close was down on her, Close worried about appearing too high on her. Close made a calculated decision: “I need to coach her hard so that her teammates don’t resent her.” It was exactly what Betts did not need.
On Jan. 19 of last season, UCLA played at Colorado—a homecoming game for Betts, who grew up in the Denver suburb of Centennial. She scored 20 points, grabbed 13 rebounds and led UCLA to a 76–68 victory over the third-ranked team in the country. But in UCLA’s postgame news conference, Close looked over at her star and knew she had a problem: “Her eyes were empty.”
Betts had missed eight shots in her return home. Embarrassing. But in this case, the eight missed shots did not cause her anguish. They were a symptom of it.
“At that point, I was just over basketball,” Betts says. “I had just hit the point where this is not worth it to me anymore. When you don’t feel good about yourself for that long and you’re expected to show up every day, that’s really hard to handle.”
The Bruins’ next game was at Utah. Betts’s parents worried about what might happen. Betts did not, which was frightening: She had sunk too low to fear failure.
During a film session, she faced the screen but paid no attention to it. She attended practice but wasn’t really there. At the team’s shootaround before the Utah game, Betts was so disinterested that Close got angry at her. Close benched Betts for the final 2:48 of regulation and all of overtime, and Betts was in too much pain for the benching to hurt. The shadows of gawking strangers, basketball critics, two college head coaches and her own mind had converged, putting Betts in the darkest place of her life.
“I just felt like the whole world was kind of crashing,” she says.
Betts left the team for two weeks to care for her mental health. While she was out, Close told her, “I’m sorry. I screwed up.” She thought she had been protecting Betts, and instead she had alienated her.
“It was important to me,” Betts says of the apology. “Her and [my] relationship was kind of messy at the time.”
Betts returned to finish the season. But she says she did not feel like herself again until last spring.
“I just hold myself to a really, really high standard,” she says. “And sometimes, for all the grace that I give others, I don’t give myself that same grace. I’m so nice to my teammates, but then I’m not nice to myself.”
Though it was not portrayed this way at the time, Wooden’s program was actually a model of instilling values while paying players. UCLA booster Sam Gilbert handled the compensation and Wooden taught the life lessons. When Gilbert’s transactions were reported in the 1980s, landing UCLA on probation, critics said they tarnished Wooden’s accomplishments. But they did not alter his impact.
Close remains a firm believer in the monetary and nonmonetary values of college basketball. But she also says, “You’re seeing a lot of [coaches] leave, and I hope I don’t have to. But I am worried.”
After decades of being overregulated, college sports are now so under-regulated that coaches must work three jobs: Game-winner, fundraiser and mentor. The system rewards the first two but not the third.
“Some coaches [say], ‘I’m just not going there.’ Or, ‘Well, this is where we’re at: We’re just gonna buy players!’ I’m trying to find the pull in the middle. It’s uncomfortable,” Close says.
The game is changing fast. In February, Close says her program needs a general manager, but she has not yet gotten around to asking her administration for it. (She says she will do so this spring.)
“Coaches making all the financial decisions and then also making all the playing time decisions—I don’t think that’s a wise, sustainable model,” Close says.
She would like to stay at UCLA. She would like to win the national title. She would also like her players to look back on their experience and feel the way Wooden’s players feel.
“Even the ones that won multiple national championships,” Close says, “it’s never the thing they talk about.”
Maxims are only meaningful if you live by them.
Success leaves clues.
Everyone needs to feel free—to feel safe, seen and heard.
Our talent is our floor. Our character will determine our ceiling.
“We’re really trying to walk in that truth,” Close says. “But it’s tough.”
Against Minnesota in early February, Close detected individualism: “It’s not direct, and it’s never intentional,” but it was there. The Bruins did not celebrate each other’s baskets as heartily. They looked inward when they made mistakes. They beat Minnesota by 26 to improve to 21–0, but Close felt a reckoning was both coming and necessary.
“I didn’t necessarily think we needed to lose,” she says, “but I thought we needed to get punched in the mouth.”
USC did it twice. But then came the Big Ten tournament title game, nine minutes left, shot clock winding down.
Two years ago, Betts never would have called for the ball.
Last year, she never would have put it on the floor.
This time, she drove to the basket.
Does the result of the play matter? If John Wooden were here, he would answer that for you:
Of course it matters! The man did not win 10 national championships through indifference.
“You run the race to win,” Close says. “But it’s just not the only thing that’s important, right?”
It is not.
(But she scored.)
(And they won.)
This article was originally published on www.si.com as How Lauren Betts Found Basketball Joy Again at UCLA.
