(Photo Courtesy of UCLA Athletics)
All-Time UCLA Women's Basketball Mount Rushmore
UCLA Athletics has a storied history of winning titles, producing Hall of Famers and fostering young athletes who go on to become bigger than their respective sports. For the last 102 years, champions have called Westwood home.
On the hardwood, UCLA women's basketball has had its fair share of iconic and important figures. Here are the four who top the list, and have their faces up on All Bruins' metaphorical Mount Rushmore for the team.
Ann Meyers
As the 12th-leading scorer, 9th-leading rebounder and 4th-leading assister in program history, Myers doesn't immediately stand out on the stat sheet as one of the greatest there ever was.
But when adding in her 101 blocks, 403 steals, four All-American honors and 1978 national championship, the full picture of her all-around dominance starts to come into focus.
Meyers was the first woman in the country to spend four years as a scholarship athlete and the first college basketball player to record a quadruple double. She averaged 17.4 points, 8.4 rebounds, 5.6 assists, 4.2 steals and 1.0 blocks per game across her UCLA career.
She was also the first-ever No. 1 overall pick in the Women's Professional Basketball League and even became the first woman to ever sign an NBA contract when she jumped over to the Indiana Pacers in 1980. Even though that exploit fizzled out, it was one of the few times Meyers didn't succeed.
Meyers' list of accolades is seemingly endless, but being named to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, Women's Basketball Hall of Fame, National High School Hall of Fame and UCLA Athletics Hall of Fame – as the first woman inductee, no less – pretty much says it all.
Denise Curry
It's no coincidence that the one year Curry and Meyers overlapped in Westwood, the Bruins won the AIAW championship.
Curry scored buckets in droves, putting up a UCLA-best 3,198 points – over 1,000 more than the next highest on the leaderboards – which was good for 24.6 per game from 1977 to 1981. The three highest-scoring seasons in program history all belong to Curry, as do the four highest field goal percentage seasons and six of the top 13 single-game scoring performances.
Oh, and she also has more career rebounds than any other Bruin.
The record books are overstuffed with Curry's name, and that helped her make the Basketball, Women's Basketball and UCLA Athletics Hall of Fames. She had her No. 12 jersey retired by UCLA in 1990 as part of the "Pauley at 25" ceremony, which also honored Meyers, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Bill Walton.
Just to be mentioned alongside those names is an honor. What's even crazier is that with all her 14 school records, three All-American teams and 130-game double-digit scoring streak, she might just challenge for the top spot among them.
Billie Moore
The coach who brought Meyers and Curry together and secured the Bruins' lone title literally built the program from the ground up.
After leading Cal State Fullerton to a national championship in 1970, Moore was picked to head up Team USA the first time women's basketball was part of the Olympics at the Montreal 1976 Games. Less than a year after winning silver, Moore got scooped up by UCLA and brought her winning ways to Westwood, winning it all in her first season with the Bruins.
While Moore wasn't able to bring a second championship to Westwood, she spent the next 15 years continuing to win at a high level.
Moore has more wins than any other UCLA women's basketball coach with 296, and she was in charge when the team made the transition to the NCAA in the early 1980s. She took the Bruins to eight tournaments, just as many as her three successors combined to make across the 22 seasons following her retirement in 1993.
She was inducted into the Basketball and Women's Basketball Hall of Fames in 1999, cementing her legacy not only with UCLA, but in the basketball world as a whole.
Natalie Williams
The fourth spot on this Mount Rushmore is a hotly contested one, but it should go to the only post-1980s Bruin to make not one, but two All-American teams.
UCLA didn't find much success on a national stage through most of the 1990s and 2000s, so seeking out tried and true champions from that period is not in the question.
After a solid freshman season, Williams averaged 22.1 points, 13.5 rebounds, 2.8 steals and 1.0 blocks per game across her final three campaigns. Williams earned her first Naismith All-American nod in 1993 – Moore's final year – and then she came back and did it again in coach Kathy Olivier's first season at the helm.
Williams finished her collegiate career ranked No. 7 on the all-time UCLA scoring list, No. 3 on the rebounding list, No. 6 on the blocks list and No. 4 on the field goal percentage list.
Pauley Pavilion wasn't just a hoops haven for Williams, either – she was also an All-American in women's volleyball who guided her team to NCAA titles in 1992 and 1993.
Her professional career started in the American Basketball League, but when it started to fold, Williams left as part of the 1999 WNBA Expansion Draft. In nine seasons at that level, Williams was named to the All-WNBA First Team three times and earned an Olympic gold medal midway through the 2000 season.
Honorable Mentions
Jordin Canada: Ranking second in program history with 2,153 points and first with 831 assists, all while guiding UCLA to three consecutive Sweet 16 appearances, gives Canada a very good case to be one of the four faces on the team's imaginary mountain. The book surely isn't done being written for Canada, and she has a long career ahead of her in the WNBA – she's already won two championships as well as a Commissioner's Cup in just three-plus seasons.
Maylana Martin: Curry, Canada and Martin are the only players in UCLA history to break the 2,000-point threshold. Martin also sits at No. 5 on the program's all-time rebounding list and No. 4 on the field goal percentage list. She hit her peak her junior year in 1999, racking up career highs in points, rebounds, assists and steals en route to a Kodak First Team All-American appearance.
Monique Billings: Scoring, rebounding and shot-blocking seemed to come easy for Billings, who was part of the same historic recruiting class as Canada back in 2014. She joins Williams as the only other player in UCLA history with 1,750 points and 1,000 rebounds, in addition to her school-record 228 blocks. Billings went to two Sweet 16s and one Elite Eight as well.
Noelle Quinn: Quinn scored the sixth-most points in school history and picked up the ninth-most assists. She wound up with more 20-plus point performances than Meyers, and was an honorable mention on both the 2005 and 2006 AP All-American teams. Quinn is also Canada's head coach with the Storm, in line to rack up some WNBA hardware now and in the future.
Cori Close: Before Close was hired in 2011, the Bruins were ranked in the postseason AP top 25 a total of 10 times over 37 seasons. Since then, UCLA has been ranked at the end of seven of Close's 10 seasons and each of the last six. At her current pace, Close needs less than four seasons to pass Moore for most coaching wins in program history, and that would mean she would do it in two fewer seasons. Close continues to recruit at a high level and has already accounted for nearly half the program's Sweet 16 appearances, so a second title might not be that far away.
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