PHOENIX — Lauren Betts compelled herself to repeatedly watch final season’s Remaining 4 debacle in opposition to UConn, utilizing the teachings realized on this 12 months’s return journey to the nationwide semifinals.

The 2-time All-American did her homework following a season-low factors in UCLA’s solely lack of the season, making use of what she gleaned from the sport movie to assist take down Texas within the rematch.

Betts opened up about her psychological well being points, the honesty taking a weight off her shoulders whereas, hopefully, serving to others dealing with their very own darkness.

This lifetime of hers has been a pursuit of perfection — or not less than the very best model of herself — and Betts capped the school basketball portion of it by reaching the head of her sport with one ultimate dominating efficiency.

UCLA gained its first NCAA nationwide championship with its 79-51 blowout of South Carolina on Sunday and Betts, as she’s been all through her profession, was the catalyst at each ends of the ground.

The 6-foot-7 senior completed with 14 factors, 11 rebounds and two blocked photographs, altering and stopping even the considered a number of others on the rim to offer UCLA its first nationwide championship since taking the 1978 AIAW title.

Betts had an identical impression in UCLA’s 51-44 shutdown of Texas within the nationwide semifinals, a 16-point, 11-rebound, three-block efficiency that set the stage for her to win Remaining 4 most excellent participant.

The closing flourish capped a rocky-at-times profession.

Betts was the nation’s No. 1 highschool recruit out of Grandview Excessive College, in Aurora, Colorado, and selected to play at perennial powerhouse Stanford. She had a strong freshman season, however the constructing psychological well being points she had been battling started to bubble nearer to the floor even after she transferred to UCLA.

Betts opened up about her struggles final 12 months and expounded upon it in a latest first-person story, by which she detailed the brutal hospital situations and the epiphany as soon as she obtained out — that she wished to be right here.

Betts devoted herself to getting higher, on and off the court docket, and have become one of many nation’s greatest faculty basketball gamers.

She was UCLA’s first Related Press All-American a 12 months in the past and backed that up with one other All-American nod after averaging 18.5 factors and seven.6 rebounds whereas taking pictures 60.1% from the sector and main the Bruins with 71 blocked photographs.

With Betts anchoring the center, the Bruins (37-1) one-upped this system’s first journey the Remaining 4 final 12 months with the very best season in historical past.

Betts was held to a season-low eight factors in a 76-65 loss to Texas, however she and the Bruins used it as motivation, reeling off a school-record 31 straight wins.

UCLA obtained the payback it wished with the lopsided win over the Longhorns within the nationwide semifinals and erased recollections of final 12 months’s blowout Remaining 4 loss to UConn with its first NCAA nationwide championship.

Betts, as common, was on the middle of all of it, the very best model of herself resulting in the best second of her and her teammates’ lives.

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AP March Insanity bracket: https://apnews.com/hub/ncaa-womens-bracket and protection: https://apnews.com/hub/march-madness