Her hands were on her hips. Her nose was sore and bloody. After Aneesah Morrow committed her fifth foul, the look of realization crossed her face. Her season — and her collegiate career — was over.
On Sunday, the LSU women’s basketball team nearly snuck into the Final Four.
But No. 1 seed UCLA protected a 14-point third quarter lead, held off the No. 3 seeded Tigers and picked up a 72-65 win in the Elite Eight, advancing to the NCAA Tournament’s national semifinal round for the first time in its history.
Morrow nearly inspired a miraculous comeback. Some late third-quarter pushing and shoving in the paint gave her a bloody nose. All she needed was a quick trip to the locker room to patch it up and return to the game. She wasn’t going to go out like that.
LSU, though, needed something more to stay alive.
“I’m tough,” Morrow said, “and I’m going to go out there and compete with my teammates. I’m going to try to do everything that I can.”
UCLA created open 3-pointers and drained most of them, building a second-half lead that was too large for the Tigers to erase. By the end of the game, UCLA had converted just 38% of its total field-goal attempts but shot an efficient 10-of-24 from beyond the arc.
LSU made a late push. Flau’jae Johnson’s scooping layup trimmed UCLA’s lead down to 65-62 at the 3:24 mark of the fourth quarter.
But the Tigers ultimately committed too many turnovers (15) and missed too many shots (10 in the fourth quarter) to steal a win.
Johnson scored 24 of her 28 points in the second half. Morrow finished with 15 and 7 rebounds, and Mikaylah Williams added a total of 10 points. No other Tiger scored more than four.
Three Bruins scored in double figures, including star Lauren Betts, the 6-foot-7 center who scored 17 points, corralled 7 rebounds and blocked 6 shots. UCLA’s leading scorer was Gabriela Jaquez, a junior guard who scored 18 points after nailing four of her five 3-point tries. Sophomore forward Timea Gardiner buried another five 3s.
“Betts did not beat us,” coach Kim Mulkey said. “We guarded her as tough as we could guard her. We did not take advantage of Betts being off the floor in the second quarter, and we allowed perimeter threes and other people to step up.”
These two teams met last season in the Sweet 16, a year to the day of the game they played on Sunday in the Elite Eight. LSU won the 2024 matchup, sending a refocused, motivated UCLA team into this season eager to avenge the loss and potentially reach the Final Four for the first time in program history.
The Bruins won enough contests to draw the tournament field’s No. 1 overall seed.
On Sunday, they looked the part. Even without Betts.
Officials whistled the first-team All-American center for a second foul at the 57-second mark of the first quarter. That call forced Betts to the bench, where she sat for the entire second frame.
LSU, however, failed to take advantage.
UCLA won the minutes it played without Betts by 10 points. By halftime, Williams and Johnson had scrounged together only three buckets, Sa’Myah Smith had picked up her second foul, and the Bruins had canned five 3-pointers on only 10 attempts — enough to give themselves a 31-26 cushion ahead of the second-half action they’d play with Betts back on the floor.
“Our defense on Betts was as good as we could do,” Mulkey said. “Our discipline defensively cost us. Examples would be when the shot clock was winding down, we are taught every day it’s a hot situation, and it’s an automatic switch, and we gave up several of those today, wide-open shots.”
But LSU nearly did enough across the third and fourth quarters to overcome the open looks they allowed in the first and second. UCLA just hit a few more shots in the fourth.
With 1:30 left, Jaquez snuck open in the right corner and buried the dagger 3-pointer — the bucket that put UCLA up 62-52.
“It was a good game,” Mulkey said. “It was a good game.”
The Elite Eight is the only round of the NCAA Tournament in which coach Kim Mulkey’s teams have a losing record. That mark, with LSU’s loss to UCLA factored in, is now 5-8.
A win would’ve given the Tigers’ their seventh trip to the Final Four. But now, for the second year in a row, they suffered a loss that left them on the outside of that group looking in.
Morrow is out of eligibility, and she’s soon expected to declare for the WNBA Draft. Johnson, a draft-eligible junior, can renounce her last year of eligibility and join Morrow in the pros if she wants to.
The only other Tigers who cannot return next year are seniors Shayeann Day-Wilson and Amani Bartlett. Last-Tear Poa, a holdover from the 2023 national title team, is also a senior, but a recent NCAA rule change awarded her and other former junior-college athletes an extra year of eligibility.
LSU is set to add four freshmen, a group that comprises the nation’s No. 1 class.
Next year, those newcomers, and potentially more from the transfer portal, will try to help the Tigers climb back over the Elite Eight hump.
