Women’s Pac-12 Tournament: UCLA falls to 12th-seeded Arizona

Before the season even began for the UCLA women’s basketball team, they were without their head coach from the previous three seasons and a senior forward who had helped carry the Bruins for the previous two.

That season ended Wednesday, as the fifth-seeded Bruins first lost a double-digit lead and then, ultimately, the game, 61-57, to 12th-seeded Arizona in the first round of the Pacific Life Pac-12 Conference women’s basketball tournament at the Galen Center.

The Wildcats (15-16) advanced to Thursday’s quarterfinals round, in which they’re set to face fourth-seeded Arizona State (19-10). Arizona, led in scoring Wednesday by guard Davellyn Whyte’s 18 points, has lost both regular-season meetings to its in-state rival this season.

UCLA (14-16) led by as much as 15 points in the first half before Arizona mounted a comeback behind its aggressive defense, cutting the lead to three.

Arizona trailed for almost the entire second half, until guard Candice Warthen, who scored 17, made a driving layup with 20.2 seconds left to give her team a 59-57 lead.

Bruins’ forward Markel Walker, who almost single-handedly kept UCLA ahead in the second half, missed a layup with three seconds left. “I should’ve made it,” said Walker, who finished with 22 points, 11 rebounds and 10 turnovers.

Arizona Coach Niya Butts said that in many previous games this season, her team fell behind early, then couldn’t make key defensive stops late in the game to help complete a comeback.

“[On Wednesday], we were able to get those stops,” Butts said.

In their first season under Coach Cori Close, who replaced Nikki Caldwell after Caldwell left to coach at Louisiana State, the Bruins finished with a losing record.

Close’s task was made more difficult in September when senior forward Jasmine Dixon, an honorable mention All-American last season, ruptured her Achilles tendon in a team workout, ending her season.

“We’ll always be looking back at the plays we could of, should of made,” Close said, “but ... they have overcome adversity, they have been resilient and for that I will be forever grateful.”