Overview:
UCSB graduate Cori Close has coached the Bruins to a 30-2 record and the No. 1 seed for this year’s NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament
Two things stood out when the local newspaper assigned me to cover my first UC Santa Barbara women’s basketball game in January 1990:
There were about as many people sitting on the team’s benches as in the stands …
… And one of them was a teenager in a wheelchair placed next to coach Mark French.
“What’s that all about?” I asked as the fresh-faced girl leaned forward in her seat to call out to the players.
The Thunderdome would be sold out 14 years later when she helped French coach the Gauchos there for the last time in a second-round victory of the NCAA tournament.
Cori Close, now the head coach at top-ranked UCLA, considers that 2004 game against Houston to be one of her two best coaching memories.
At least that’s what she said before defeating arch-rival USC — coached by Lindsay Gottlieb, French’s successor for three seasons at UCSB — for last week’s Big Ten championship.
“It was just an amazing moment,” she said of her final Gaucho coaching victory. “It was spectacular to be able to share that with the community and student body.
“To go from the beginning when nobody cared to be at games to gaining respect and getting the community excited about our team was powerful.”
That win over Houston — played before a raucous crowd that Close had worked tirelessly to recruit — advanced UCSB to its first and only NCAA Sweet 16 in basketball.
She said her other top coaching moment was the first of the six Sweet 16s she’s reached during her 13 completed seasons at UCLA.
Close took the Bruins to the Elite Eight in 2018, but the school has never been to the NCAA Final Four in women’s basketball.
She has them primed, however, to take March Madness all the way into April for the Last Dances in Tampa, Florida.
UCLA (30-2) earned the No. 1 seed for the upcoming NCAA tournament by rallying from a 10-point halftime deficit to its 72-67 victory over USC (28-3) in last week’s Big Ten final in Indianapolis.
“I just really want to say thank you to all the people who helped us get here,” Close said as she began the post-game news conference.
“My staff … incredible, selfless, hard-working, mission-minded, incredible,” she continued, referring in part to a pair of assistants, Tony Newnan and Tasha Brown, who she’d met at UCSB.
“Then just all the people, just for me personally that I wouldn’t be sitting in this chair without.”
Once upon time, that chair came with wheels and was parked right next to Mark French.
Happy Camper
Close, a four-year starter at Milpitas High School outside San José, didn’t impress French much with her physical attributes when he first spotted her at a Pepperdine all-star camp.
She stood just 5-foot-6 and wasn’t especially quick.
But he took special note of the way she related to the other players.
“At those camps, players don’t really know each other and there isn’t a lot of communication between them on the court,” he said. “There was Cori getting all the players on her team together, putting her arms around them, talking to them.
“I thought, ‘There’s a coach.’”
Cori, the daughter of former Milpitas High coach Don Close, had earned the job as French’s starting point guard early in her freshman year.
But her season took an unfortunate turn of events during the 13th game.
“Everything was going great … and I turned and ruptured my Achilles tendon,” she said.
“It just exploded, and I didn’t know what to do.”
French and his 5-year-old son, Matthew, were the first to visit her after trainer Maria Mahoney brought her from the hospital back to her dorm room at San Miguel Hall.
“Coach and I talked about what the doctors had said,” Close recalled. “And then Matthew climbed up on my bed, right next to me, and said, ‘Are you going to be OK?’ in the most sincere, sweet voice.
“I felt so cared for by that little, 5-year-old boy.”
UCSB suddenly felt like home for the despondent, 18-year-old freshman.
“I came to a game in a wheelchair, and coach French made a space for me,” she said. “He kept me sane when I was so sad.
“Being coached by him changed the course of my life.”
French flashed back to that Pepperdine camp when Close began chattering away from her wheelchair.
“I’d hear what she said to other players,” he said, “and I would think, ‘That’s a good idea … That makes sense.’”
Making a Point
She made an even bigger difference when she took the court again, leading UCSB in assists for the next three seasons. She finished with 603 for her career — the third-most in school history.
Close also achieved a Gaucho-first when she surpassed 1,000 points and 600 assists — a feat matched only by Stacy Clinesmith in 2000. She ranks 19th all-time at UCSB with 1,224 points.
She also served as captain of the Gauchos’ NCAA tournament teams of 1992 and 1993.
A large banner was draped on the trees outside the Thunderdome to greet the Gauchos when they completed their triumphant bus ride home from the 1992 Big West Conference tournament in Long Beach.
“It said, Respect,” Close said. “I will always remember that.”
She made 11-of-11, clutch free throws the following week to help beat Houston, 80-69, in the first round of the NCAA tournament.
The Gauchos lost at Stanford in the second round, 82-73. It was the Cardinal’s closest game in its dominating run to the 1992 NCAA championship.
The graduation of such stars as Barb Beainy, Lisa Crosskey and Erika Kienast turned the Gauchos into Big West underdogs the following season.
But that only fueled Close even more. She led UCSB to three straight wins in Long Beach — the last two over No. 2 seed UNLV and No. 1 Hawai‘i — to win the 1993 Big West tournament championship.
Christa Gannon, a junior forward on that team, said the Gauchos relied heavily on Close’s leadership that week in a most unique way.
“A bunch of us were in a sociology class,” Gannon said. “If we won the game, we would miss the final exam. If we lost the game, we would have to take the final.
“So a bunch of us were trying to study, and it was really messing with our heads … We felt like if we had studied, we were telling ourselves that we were going to lose the game.”
They asked Close if she could talk to their professor about it.
“And so she did,” Gannon said. “She called the professor and said, ‘Hey, we need help. We can’t do it all. Can you postpone our final whether we win or lose?’”
With that pressure removed, Gannon and the others were able to focus on winning the championship.
Tournament officials named Close as the Most Valuable Player after her late three-pointer beat Hawai‘i in the final, 80-77.
She also led the Gauchos to a first-round NCAA win over BYU.
Close finished her senior season with team-high averages of 15.4 points and 8.3 assists — a school record that still stands.
Tuesdays with Cori
She had made another strong impression the previous summer.
UCLA coach Kathy Olivier, like French four years earlier, noticed the way Close related to others while working her basketball camp.
She offered her a $16,000-a-year job as the Bruins’ restricted earnings coach as soon as she graduated from UCSB.
Close eventually developed a friendship with Steve Lavin, who served on the staff of legendary UCLA men’s coach John Wooden.
“I would tease Steve, ‘When are you going to take me to meet coach?’” Close said. “One day, Steve came to me and said, ‘We’re going tonight.’
“I freaked out. I was a nervous wreck walking from the elevator to his apartment.”
Close entered Wooden’s house with several coaches, but the Hall of Fame coach took immediate notice of the lone female in the group.
“He says, ‘Wait, who are you?’” Close recalled. “I was like, ‘Cori.’ And it had like 10 syllables because I was shaking so much.
“And he goes, ‘How do you spell that?’ I said, ‘C-o-r-i.’ He goes, come right over here. I want to show you something.”
Wooden led her to a bench. On it was the word “Cori.”
“He said, ‘You’re the first person I’ve ever met who spells that like my great-granddaughter, Cori,’” Close said. “And the relationship went on from there.
“I went there almost every Tuesday when I was an assistant coach in ’93 to ’95, and then pretty much even when I went to Santa Barbara.”
Their get-togethers became transformative for the young coach.
Close gets so emotional when she speaks of Wooden that a friend advised her to wait until the end of her introductory news conference at UCLA to mention him.
“I sat in that den and I sat in his living room and heard his stories,” Close said. “It’s not just my coaching that’s been influenced by him, it’s my life. It’s my leadership.
“He used to say to me, ‘You know, you’re not coaching people’s jump shots, Cori. You’re coaching people’s hearts.’
“But then he would also say, ‘But if you coach their hearts really well, usually their jump shots end up pretty good, too.’
“That’s where my whole mission comes from.”
Gaucho Homecoming
Close would take the entire Gaucho team to visit Wooden once a season after French hired her as his top assistant in 1995.
Gary Cunningham, UCSB’s athletic director at the time, said she called it “going to the shrine.”
Close helped French win the Big West championship in the last eight of her nine seasons as his assistant coach.
Her creation of the Fast Breakers support group also gave the Gauchos what French described as “one of the biggest booster clubs on the West Coast.”
Close, a devout Christian, helped fill the stands with a mixture of church groups, youth basketball teams, young families, and just plain basketball junkies.
“People in the community felt that these were their players,” French explained. “Kids would beg their parents to go to games.”
Close accepted an offer to join the staff of Florida State coach Sue Semrau in 2004 to “learn how to coach at a big school … a football school.”
She was inducted into UCSB’s Intercollegiate Athletics Hall of Fame the following year.
She declined to pursue the Gaucho job, however, when French retired in 2008. UCLA was always her destiny.
But Close will always treasure the meeting she had with French before her last season with the Gauchos.
“He started asking me all of these amazing questions, and we got really involved in just talking,” she recalled. “At the end, I started to get up, and he put his hand on my shoulder and almost pushed me back down into the chair again and said, ‘How are you?’”
“I gave him this really pat, trite answer. I didn’t believe he really wanted to know.
“But he put his hand on my shoulder and said, ‘No, really … how are you?’
“I felt the same thing in my early 30s that I did when I was 18 in that dorm room. Cared for. Engaged.”
The Bruins have high hopes for her next engagement in the NCAA tournament.
But French saw the bigger picture when his protégé was hired by UCLA in 2011, just one year after Wooden’s death.
“Cori has as good a grasp on what the total college experience is all about as any coach in the country,” he said. “Anyone who comes to UCLA to play for her will get everything possible, the total package, that the university has to offer.
“Somewhere, coach Wooden is smiling today.”
