LOS ANGELES — Has UCLA junior center Lauren Betts become the front-runner for women’s college basketball’s player of the year award?
“There was a great piece at halftime of the Tennessee-South Carolina game on Lauren, making a play for her to be the No. 1 player in the country this year,” Bruins coach Cori Close said this past week.
“And I think the reason it’s so huge is because of the way she impacts winning, possession by possession in so many different ways. It’s not just scoring. It’s altering shots. It’s blocking shots. It’s being able to switch on multiple screens. It’s people not even wanting to go in (the lane) because she’s in there, the way she sets screens for other people, the way she does so many things that impact winning on both sides of the basketball. I do not think her impact can be overstated.”
As the focal point of the top-ranked team in the country, the 6-foot-7 Betts might be as viable a candidate as anyone. UCLA is 20-0 going into Sunday afternoon’s game against Minnesota at Pauley Pavilion, and Betts is among the national leaders in scoring (21 ppg, tied for 13th), rebounding (9.9 rpg, tied for 25th), offensive rebounds (4.6, seventh), blocked shots (3.0, fourth), field-goal percentage (64.1%, ninth) and double-doubles (11, tied for 9th).
But to better understand her value, you have to watch her play, to see her presence in the post offensively, reminiscent of the great centers of the past with her footwork, her passing and her ability around the basket, though she participates in screens and dribble handoffs and doesn’t restrict herself to the low block.
Defensively, she is as much of a rim protector as anyone in the women’s college game, and she is on a particular roll right now. She had 25 blocks in the Bruins’ last four games: seven against Penn State at home, and then nine against Baylor in the Coretta Scott King Classic in New Jersey, five at Rutgers and four at Maryland on a week-long trip East.
Those three road games, in which she averaged 27.3 points, 9.6 rebounds and 6.0 blocks, might have garnered the attention of those on the Eastern Seaboard who vote for the Naismith and Wooden player of the year awards.
But don’t call Betts a throwback.
“You watch her in our offensive system, she gets out and handles the ball and gets in DHO situations,” Close said. “She switches screens one to five. She’s not someone who just sits in the paint. Her skill set is way beyond the traditional old-school center position.
“She’s not a throwback. She’s a generational talent, period.”
It’s fair to say Betts has blossomed this season. A year ago, the Bruins finished 27-7 and lost to LSU in the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Tournament. Betts, who had transferred in from Stanford, averaged 13.7 points, 8.6 rebounds and 2.1 blocks, but she said this past week that “last year, I was so worried about the wrong things, and I think it had a lot to do with things that weren’t really in my control. Once I let that take over my mental state, I think it just kind of showed in how I played. I feel like I just played a lot more timid.”
And now?
“I think I’m just playing a lot lighter and I feel like a lot more free when I’m playing,” she said. “I’m not really worried about outside noise as much. I just go on the court and my biggest priority is to do what I have to do to make the team win. And that’s all I care about.”
Betts is the offspring of two former Long Beach State athletes. Her mother, Michelle, played volleyball at Long Beach and was part of a national championship team in 1993. Her father, Andrew, was a 7-1 center who played for Long Beach his senior year and went on to play several pro seasons in Europe and with the English national team.
And yes, he taught Lauren a few things about post play and remains a good source of information.
“Obviously, I wanted to be like him growing up,” she said. “He’s like my biggest fan, and he texts me a whole paragraph before every single game and giving me tips on what to do and what not to do.”
Betts said she admired former South Carolina center Aliyah Boston, who currently plays for the WNBA’s Indiana Fever. And, growing up in Colorado, she received some high-level tutoring in center play from Ervin Johnson, who played 845 NBA games for Seattle, Denver, Milwaukee and Minnesota from 1993 through 2006 and is now a community ambassador for the Nuggets – and is, obviously, not to be confused with Lakers legend Earvin “Magic” Johnson.
Ervin Johnson “basically taught me everything I knew in the post, and my footwork would not be the way it is without him,” she said.
The importance of footwork in the post is not to be understated. The late Pete Newell, a Hall of Fame college coach, NBA executive and the director (and head tutor) of the summertime Big Man Camp from 1976 through 2011, talked of how players are right-footed or left-footed, just as if they’re right- or left-handed, and part of the educational process was to teach them to be comfortable using their weaker foot.
Newell once explained it this way, according to San Francisco Chronicle columnist Bruce Jenkins in his 1999 book, “A Good Man”: “In a basketball game a player will have the ball in his hands for maybe four minutes. But he’ll have his feet on the court for maybe 40. Everything you do in basketball relates to your feet. Your movement. Your stops, your jumping and positioning.”
Betts gets it.
“It takes you a long way, obviously,” she said. “If you don’t really know how to move and read your defender it’s really hard, especially with how elite everyone is at the college level.”
She makes it a point to talk up her teammates’ roles in the course of conversation, and Close notes the importance of the guards getting the ball to her “both off the bounce and pick-and-roll situations, but also in traditional post feeds. … Her teammates deserve a lot of credit because we ride them hard when they don’t get her the ball in really good scoring positions.
“And also a credit to her, though. She’s gotten better at sealing (a defender) earlier. She’s gotten better at setting and using screens so that those reads are not as difficult. We have great, talented guards and she’s really talented. But it’s the execution and attention to detail that has really gotten better.”
All of that said? Betts and her teammates and coaches are still a long way from where they want to be – in Tampa, for the Women’s Final Four from April 4-6. Nine regular-season games remain before the Big Ten Tournament in Indianapolis, and that includes both meetings with No. 4 USC, which is currently 19-1 and also unbeaten in Big Ten play going into Sunday’s game at Iowa.
That outside noise Betts talked about? It’s louder now, especially when you become the hunted.
“We’re never settling,” Betts said. “We’re trying to make sure … we’re not playing the victim role. Regardless of what happens, regardless of who we’re playing, we’re always going to show up the same way. And every single practice, whoever we’re playing against, we’re always going to prepare to the max and just (make) sure that we’re doing what we need to do to be our best.”
After all, championships – and individual honors – aren’t won in the first week of February.
Minnesota (18-4, 6-4) at UCLA (20-0, 8-0)
When: Noon Sunday
Where: Pauley Pavilion
TV: Big Ten Sports Network
jalexander@scng.com