LOS ANGELES — USC handed the UCLA women’s basketball team its first loss of the season on Thursday, but the Bruins were able to regroup three days later and beat No. 22 Michigan State 75-69.
Timea Gardiner drained a corner three with 43 seconds left in the game to give UCLA a 71-69 advantage. Janiah Barker jumped up for an offensive rebound and dished the ball to Londynn Jones, who handed it off to Gardiner for the shot.
UCLA (24-1 overall, 12-1 Big Ten) closed out the game on a 7-0 run to seal the win.
The Bruins were without 6-foot-7 center Lauren Betts, who was not dressed for the game and wearing an air cast on her right foot. The junior is day-to-day with a right foot injury.
Betts is the second-leading scorer in the Big Ten behind USC’s Juju Watkins and contributes an average of 19.5 points per game while pulling down 9.9 rebounds per game.
Six-foot-4 Janiah Barker started at center in her absence and was the game’s leading scorer with 18 points in addition to 12 rebounds, three assists and two steals. Kiki Rice added 16 points and seven assists and Timea Gardiner added 18 points.
Barker and 6-foot-4 forward Angela Dugalić were both active in the post but UCLA still gave up 22 points in the paint in the first half, which was already above the usual average of 19.6 per game.
The Bruins continued to feel the absence of their star center throughout the game. Michigan State (19-6, 9-5) took advantage of lapses in physicality in the paint to score 22 points in the third quarter to take a 55-53 lead at the end of the frame.
Freshman Kendall Dudley knocked a shot out of bounds with 2.7 seconds left on the clock to rustle up some defensive enthusiasm heading into the final quarter but UCLA struggled to get rebounds when it counted. The Bruins were in danger of suffering their first set of back-to-back losses since 2023.
Gardiner shot 4-for-7 from beyond the arc and made back-to-back threes in the second quarter to give UCLA a 37-26 lead over the Spartans. She favored a spot just to the left of the key — a shot she has made seemingly thousands of times while shooting around after practice.
Barker shot 5-for-6 in the first half to score 10 points. She snatched the ball off a bad pass by Michigan State and made a fast break layup with 1:39 left to finish off the first half on a strong defensive note before the Spartans took control in the proceeding quarter.
UCLA played well as a team in the first half, passing around the perimeter with fluidity and getting scoring contributions from up and down the bench. They shot 50% from both the field and 3-point range.