LA’s (other) college basketball superstar

When most people think of Los Angeles women’s basketball, Juju Watkins and the USC Trojans most likely come to mind. While the hometown hero aims to lead her team to their first national championship in over 40 years, another group just a few miles down the road also have their sights set on being crowned the city’s new women’s basketball dynasty by bringing a trophy back to L.A.

Currently in their sixth week atop the AP Top 25 poll, UCLA is exceeding expectations all thanks to their own superstar, the 6-foot-7 Lauren Betts is averaging 19.9 points, 9.8 rebounds, 2.2 assists and 2 blocks for the undefeated Bruins.

Betts’ name isn’t new among those familiar with the women’s game. Immediately set apart by her “imposing post presence,” in the words of an ESPN scout, Betts drew interest from many elite universities while playing for Grandview High School in Aurora, Colo., a Denver suburb near her hometown of Centennial.

Betts lived the first eight years of her life in Vitoria, Spain, where her father, 7-foot-1 Andrew, played professional basketball. As a kid, she tried out soccer and swimming in hopes of differentiating from her dad, but ended up joining a basketball team when her family moved to Colorado.

After developing friendships with her teammates, Betts decided to continue playing basketball despite feeling that she wasn’t particularly gifted at it. As her game started to gain more attention, Betts realized that inner confidence was the key to unlocking the talent and passion that had always been there.

After a dominant high school career averaging a double-double for Grandview, Betts was widely considered a five-star prospect and solidified her ranking as the No. 1 overall recruit of the 2022 class. With offers from any school she could dream of, the two-time Colorado Gatorade Player of the Year announced her commitment to play for Tara VanDerveer at Stanford just months before the team brought home a national championship.

Shortly after her graduation from Grandview, Betts told Charlie Desadier of SLAM Magazine that she “[didn’t] want to go to a school where I know I’m going to be, like, the best as soon as I walk in. I want to go to a school where, obviously, my freshman year might not be as amazing as I want [it] to be, but we’ll see what happens,” emphasizing that she believed that each season would get better as time went on.

While adding a player of Betts’ height and caliber to one of the top programs in the country might seem like an undeniable advantage, Stanford’s core rotation was already well-established upon her arrival in Paolo Alto. Betts’ freshman season marked the last hurrah for Stanford’s “Funky Four” (Fran Belibi, Hannah Jump, Haley Jones, and Ashten Prechtel), who together led the Cardinal to three Pac-12 Championships, a national championship in 2021, and a Final Four appearance in 2022. With six national championship members on the roster, incoming freshman Betts knew that her role–and her stats– might look a bit different from high school.

Betts’ freshman year with the Cardinal was quieter than anticipated, even considering the strength of the roster. In the shadow of then-junior Cameron Brink, who dominated national awards voting that season, Betts averaged just 5.9 points and 3.5 rebounds in only 9.6 minutes per game in her freshman campaign.

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Just a few weeks after No. 1 overall Stanford was stunned by No. 8 Mississippi in the second round of the 2023 NCAA Tournament, news broke that Betts had entered the transfer portal. The news was particularly shocking not only because of her prior comments acknowledging the season might not be her best, but also because Stanford historically boasts a low portal entry rate.

While it is rare for players to recount the exact reasoning behind their departure from a program, Betts has alluded to her lack of usage at Stanford leading to a plummet in her confidence, also recognizing that the season ahead–so half of her college career–would likely look the same. In a podcast episode with her former teammate Jones, Betts said that her decision to enter the portal was a “very tough decision to make,” stressing that outsiders often don’t consider off-the-court factors in a player’s choice to leave a school.

“At the end of the day, I just wanted to be happy,” Betts said. “My freshman year was so tough, but I just wanted to make sure I was in a good place for the rest of my four years and I wanted to be supported at the end of the day.”

During high school recruitment and through USA Basketball, Betts had formed a relationship with Bruins head coach Cori Close, prompting her to take an official visit of her own. After spending just a weekend in Westwood with Close’s staff and players, Betts cancelled her other pending visits to commit to UCLA.

After arriving in L.A., Betts’ impact on Close’s roster was immediate. In her debut as a Bruin, she topped her career-high 18 points with 20 points in 20 minutes on 81% shooting from the field. She finished her sophomore season with 24 double-digit scoring games–half of those were also double-doubles–while leading UCLA in points (14.9), rebounds (9.3), and blocks (1.9) per game, leading them to a Sweet Sixteen appearance. Now in her second season under Close, Betts has already racked up 7 double-doubles in just 10 games and recorded her first 30-point performance in her second game of the season.

For Betts, transferring to UCLA reminds her of what initially ignited her passion and unlocked her talent.

“I get a lot of my confidence from my coaches,” Betts said in her conversation with Jones. “They truly believe in me so much with everything. I’m out here, like, guarding on the perimeter, which I wasn’t doing [at Stanford]…I just feel like it has changed my game so much and I have so much confidence…My coaches have been pushing me so much in practice and making sure that I believe that I can do it myself and I think that it’s just expanded my game so much, just all of the belief that they have in me.”

Photo by Jayne Kamin-Oncea/Getty Images

While Betts’ height and rim protecting abilities are often the most highly emphasized when discussing her game, Close has been pleasantly surprised by another area of development since joining her squad.

“It starts with the leadership side, that’s where I’ve seen the biggest growth in [Betts’] ability to use her voice and she has an incredible basketball IQ,” Close said. “In that way, she’s sort of a point/forward for us. We want to hear her voice out there, we want her to help us anticipate and not react, her IQ is really really high and her leadership voice has been incredibly impactful for us.”

With a click of a button entering her into the transfer portal, Betts has transformed from a diffident bench-riding freshman to an unapologetically confident leader of one of the top programs in the country.

Currently holding a perfect record, UCLA will soon enter into their first season of conference play as a member of the Big Ten. Unfortunately, we have to wait until February 13 to see Betts’ Bruins take on cross-town rival USC and Watkins, a rematch of the thrilling double-overtime PAC-12 championship last season.