Bruins advance to Pac-12 tournament final
UCLA women’s basketball beat Arizona, 58-49, in the Pac-12 Conference Tournament semifinals on Friday night at Michelob Ultra Arena in Las Vegas.
The Bruins (16-4) will face Stanford in the championship game Sunday at 5 p.m.
Michaela Onyenwere scored 24 points for the Bruins. Emily Bessoir added six points and seven boards and Natalie Chou had seven points and six rebounds.
The matchup was tightly contested throughout. The No. 3-seeded Bruins’ Michaela Onyenwere scored the first points of the game on a layup, but the No. 2-seeded Wildcats (16-5) answered with two points of their own less than a minute later, a pattern that would continue.
The score was knotted at 8-8 heading into the second quarter, but UCLA began to pull away midway through the frame, rattling off seven points to bring the score to 17-13 as the clock ticked to 6:22.
Onyenwere scored 10 points and had two steals in the first half to help give UCLA a 25-17 lead going into halftime. Defensively, the Bruins limited Arizona to 1-for-6 on 3-point shooting.
Arizona scored seven points to start the third quarter, but the Bruins had a nine-point scoring run of their own to make it 34-24 in their favor. Each team added four more points heading into the final quarter.
UCLA was able to hold the Wildcats at arm’s length for the remainder of the game.
Aari McDonald scored a team-high 24 points and pulled down eight rebounds for the Wildcats.
STANFORD 79, OREGON STATE 45» Cameron Brink scored a career-high 24 points and grabbed 11 rebounds to lead No. 4 Stanford over Oregon State.