Uniquely Gifted

Every other Tuesday for fifteen years, Cori Close would visit John Wooden at his house. On the drive over, she’d stop at Baskin-Robbins to pick up a pint of ice cream — either strawberry or lemon custard.

Close was just a young assistant coach back then, but Wooden took an immediate shine to her because she spelled her name the same way as his great-granddaughter.

Wooden passed away shortly before Close was hired as the head coach of UCLA’s women’s basketball team, but she would use his teachings and mentorship to forge a path that feels eerily similar to the Wizard of Westwood.

It took Wooden sixteen seasons to win his first national championship at UCLA, and Close just guided the Bruins to her first national championship in her fifteenth season.

But underneath the timeframe, there’s deeper similarities that would, no doubt, make Wooden immensely proud.

Throughout the Bruins’ title run, Close used Wooden’s famous Pyramid of Success to guide her team, using it to speak about the types of habits that were going to be necessary to achieve competitive greatness.

“The Pyramid of Success is about character, and I don’t think character ever goes out of style,” Close says.

“One of the biggest gifts Coach Wooden gave me,” Close says, “is that his success validated the way he went about his process. It encouraged me that you can be at the highest levels of excellence and still treat people well, you can hold high standards and not doing it in a demeaning way.”

Close’s principle-centered approach got its own stamp of approval when they beat South Carolina to win the national championship, but was meaningfully validated on WNBA Draft night, when a record six Bruins were selected.

6th overall pick Kiki Rice had this to say on her teammates’ success:

The Bruins had used the word uncommon to describe their way of doing things, and it’s certainly uncommon to hear a modern athlete championing the virtues of selflessness over their personal brand.

Character never goes out of style.

Perhaps the most enduring lesson that Wooden gave to Close, though, was to be herself. In those bi-weekly meetings, she would frequently ask him what he would do in a situation, and Wooden would refuse to answer that way.

“One of the things he would affirm in me,” Close recalls, “is don’t try to do it like anybody else.”

She adds: “I would always say to him ‘What advice would you give me’ or ‘How do I do it like you did’ and he would respond, ‘That’s the wrong question’. He would tell me I’m uniquely wired and gifted to do it the way I’m called to do it.”

Close said that she drew on this memory a lot during the 2026 NCAA Tournament. “It really freed me up to know that I don’t need to be like Dawn Staley or Geno Auriemma or Vic Schaefer, who all have amazing resumes. But it’s okay to do it in the way that I’m uniquely gifted to do it.”

Asked what it will be like to have her championship banner hanging alongside Wooden’s inside Pauley Pavilion, a teary-eyed Close said:

“To be next to him, it’s this pay-it-forward moment to be able to say thank you to him, and I listened!”

Cody’s Notes

• A week before the national championship game, Cori Close said she was considering walking away from coaching due to burnout: “I think it’s harder for coaches now. I’ve never been as tired as I’ve been in the last two years, and it’s made me think how much longer I can do this.”

• She also said that she wants to be part of the solution, rather than just complain, but did have one clear ask: “If there's one thing I would ask of our governing bodies and the NCAA and our administrations is please develop infrastructure and boundaries that create an opportunity to have sustained excellence and sustainable pace. Otherwise, we are going to continue to lose some of our best coaches, and I do not think our game can afford to do that.”

• I’ve written and spoken about coach burnout for nearly a decade, so my thoughts on it are widely available, but I just want to reiterate this point: here we have the (literal) Second Coming of John Wooden, and we’re going to chase her out of the game because of ham-handed administrators, negligent governance, and greed. This doesn’t seem like a good result for anyone.