Cori Close has changed the face of the UCLA women’s basketball program. Before Close, the team reached 11 NCAA tournaments in 30 seasons. They have reached 9 in Close’s 14-year period already, including their first Final Four appearance last year. Close also took this team to their first AP No. 1 rank in program history. This season, UCLA is set to contend for the title after winning the Big Ten Regular season unbeaten and the Big Ten title. And yet, there was a player exodus for Close, which made her job exponentially difficult. 

“I had families and parents that were mad at me all the time. Then I had 6 kids leave our program. I have never had that my entire career; I had six kids leave,” Close said in an interview on the “Out of Bounds!” show. “Literally as we touched down from final four, I had two phone calls from families wanting to have a zoom that day. And they ended up leaving.”

More importantly, 4 out of those 6 were freshmen (Janiah Barker and Londyn Jones being the juniors). Avary Cain went to Oregon, Zania Socka‑Nguemen transferred to Indiana, Elina Aarnisalo went to North Carolina and Kendall Dudley went to Michigan. They were specifically scouted by Close to fit her style and after just 1 year, they up and left for a new program. It could largely be in search of more minutes as apart from Elina, everyone played less than 20 minutes per game. However, the UCLA boss maintained that there was no bitterness there. 

“There are really good reasons. The portal is not the big bad thing. I have five  transfers on my team right now. But I do think it’s hard,” she said. “The the amount of times that I’m going to be able to take a freshman class and everybody’s going to stay through for four years. Those probably days are over.”

In 2024-25 she scaled back, she only brought Sienna Betts as the recruit, along with Lena Bilic and Christina Siegel. Now, she faces a tough situation going into next season. 7 seniors will graduate and get drafted, leading to multiple vacant spots. So far there is not one commit for Close in her 2026 Freshman class. She will have to dip into the portal quite a bit to fill this void. But it is her style to adapt with the times as quickly as possible. While she does not completely demonize NIL and the transfer portal, she pointed out a strong undercurrent that the addition of money to the game has changed the players’ lives. 

Cori Close Sounds Alarm on Parents Putting Players in an ‘Impossible Situation’

Being a coach is more than just the Xs and Os of basketball. It is handling the players, their emotional state and development, forming real relationships with them, getting them to buy into your idea and many other tasks a coach must do to cover all bases. One of them is dealing with the players’ parents. In college ball, the players enter at the age of just 18 when they aren’t completely independent yet. According to Close, the relationship with parents has drastically changed in the past few years, causing a major headache for the players. 

“The problem is that when you don’t have alignment in the true purpose and values,” Close said. “That’s when it starts being like dealing with each other and people yelling stuff from the stands or people giving me call like my daughter needs to play more, do this or do that,’ and again, I want to I really care about how great our parents are, and our kids, they love their parents. I just think it puts young people in an impossible situation because if they please me, then their parents are mad and if they please their parents, then I’m mad.”

Close further explained that parents often tie their approval of players directly to their performance, creating an extremely unhealthy dynamic. Eventually, it affects their lives on and off the court. The players are already under pressure to deliver and such an internal struggle just makes that worse. Close specifically makes an effort to make her players “unlearn” that. 

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“I just think we all have to really take off our individual identities associated with these kids’ performances and truly just be like, what does it look like to help them maximize their growth and if we’re both looking at it through that lens. I think we got a chance.” 

As the Bruins go for another championship push and an offseason that could alter their trajectory, Cori Close’s biggest challenge may not be her basketball IQ but her interpersonal ability. In an era defined by movement and outside influences, sustaining culture and stability might prove just as crucial as winning games.