LSU faces big test vs. UCLA’s Lauren Betts in Elite Eight showdown

SPOKANE, Wash. — LSU coach Kim Mulkey has seen every way teams can try to contain dominant post players with size.

After all, she had the luxury of 6-foot-8 Brittney Griner for four years at Baylor.

But in Sunday’s Elite Eight matchup against UCLA, Mulkey will have the challenge of trying to get her team to contain UCLA 6-foot-7 center Lauren Betts, whose skill set has shades of Griner’s college days.

Everything UCLA does runs through Betts.

She controls the paint, is wildly efficient at finishing around the rim, a premier shot blocker and strong passer.

Even scarier? Betts is playing some of her best basketball this month.

Betts scored 31 points on 15-for-16 shooting and had 10 rebounds and three blocks in Friday’s Sweet 16 win against Ole Miss.

It was her second consecutive double-double after she had 30 points and 14 rebounds in the win against Richmond in the Round of 32.

“She is so talented. Just watching her from high school until today, it’s amazing how good she is,” Mulkey said of Betts. “Certainly her height is an advantage and we’re not going to grow that tall overnight. But we have to battle and do the best we can. But she’s not all they have. Certainly everything they do goes through her, as it should, but they’re talented at a lot of positions.”

Betts is better now than she was a year ago.

That’s clear in the way she scores, times her rebounds, reads opposing defense and anchors the Bruins’ interior defense.

LSU’s Aneesah Morrow and Sa’Myah Smith will have their work cut out for them.

But the entire UCLA team, which lost to LSU in last year’s Sweet 16, has made a major leap this season to be the nation’s top team.

The work started in the summer.

Not only did players focus on refining their individual games, but as a team, the Bruins worked on special situations, including closing quarters and out-of-timeout scenarios.

“[I] really have tried to empower them more [to] create chaotic situations in practice, create adverse scenarios,” coach Cori Close said. “I’m the least favorite coach from pretty much November to through, and I think it had to be my role. I needed to push them out of that comfort zone and create the struggle and adversity that was going to make them learn to be empowered to make their own decisions. So those are two things that I felt like I needed to respond to from last year.”

That “chaos” has paid dividends.

UCLA ended South Carolina’s lengthy winning streak in November and earned the program’s first national No. 1 ranking.

The Bruins went 27-2 in the regular season and won the Big Ten tournament title.

They’re the No. 1 seed in this year’s NCAA Tournament and are contending for not only UCLA’s first Final Four appearance but a potential national title.

When the bracket was released, though, some UCLA players were excited to see that LSU was in their regional.

“Some of us wanted to play LSU just because we knew that we lost to them and we want to win,” junior Gabriela Jaquez said. “We know we’re capable of beating them. … We’re a different team than we were. After seeing some film from our game last year, and I’m just like, ‘Yeah, I’m a way better defender than that.’ And all of us are saying the same thing.”