Cori Close has been the head coach of women’s basketball at UCLA since 2011, building one of the most consistent programs in the country over more than a decade. Before taking the Bruins job, she spent seven seasons as associate head coach at Florida State, where she helped establish the Seminoles as a nationally recognized program, and had an earlier stint on the UCLA staff in 1994 and 1995. She played for the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she was a team captain in 1992 and 1993 and led the Gauchos to back-to-back NCAA Tournament appearances.
The 2024-25 season was among the best of her tenure, when UCLA made its first-ever Final Four appearance and won the Big Ten Tournament championship. Close swept all four major national Coach of the Year awards: the Associated Press, Naismith, USBWA, and WBCA honors.
Despite that success, Close has been candid about the pressures of coaching in the current college sports environment. “I’ve considered going to the WNBA,” she told The Sporting Tribune. “I’ve had opportunities and I’ve said, ‘Not yet.’”
Cori has credited her commitment to her players as the primary reason for staying, though the decision, she has acknowledged, grows more complicated each year. She also told USA Today in 2024 that the way she has shaped the UCLA women’s basketball team is rooted in the soccer experience her dad coached for her and her friends when she was young. “I think he was a girl dad before he really knew what that was,” she said.
Here, get to know Cori’s parents, Patti and Don Close.
Cori’s dad, Don:
Cori’s father, Don, was a former college football player who went on to coach sports at Milpitas High School in the San Francisco Bay Area. He also taught health and psychology over a three-decade teaching career.
“When I play up at Stanford every year, several people from my youth soccer team come,” Close told USA Today. “And they don’t come because we won a lot of soccer games. They come because my dad had a program and not a team. My dad taught lessons and made them feel loved unconditionally. And, they, to this day, still come back. In fact, two of them spoke at my dad’s memorial service.” Don passed away in 2021 at his home in Chatsworth, California after battling vascular dementia.
Cori’s mom, Patti:
Cori Close waving to her mother, Patti, before a UCLA v. Nebraska game in 2024.
Known to the team as “Mother Bruin,” Cori’s mother, Patti, is a fixture at UCLA women’s basketball games. Since Cori took the UCLA job in 2011, Patti has traveled with the team to Europe and Africa. “I never even had a passport,” she told the Associated Press. “It’s a dream. I love the kids. I always joke that I fall in love with them and they have the nerve to leave and graduate. How dare they.”
Her involvement with the program deepened after the death of her husband, Don, in 2021, with whom she had attended games together for 53 years of marriage. “That’s a gift to me, for our team to be so kind to my mom, to give purpose for my mom,” Cori said.
At age 80, Patti drives herself to games, arriving an hour before tipoff, and will go to the interview room after the final buzzer for the postgame recaps. She also shows up early for recruit dinners at Cori’s home and makes her pitch to incoming players’ families. Patti will often stay at Cori’s house on game nights rather than making the 30-minute drive back to her home in the San Fernando Valley. After games, the two share what Cori calls “afterglow,” during which Cori pours a glass of wine while Patti reviews the box score and rehashes the postgame media session. “I usually joke that I’m placating her,” Cori said, “but probably if I’m really honest, it’s sort of a safety net for me, too.”
Along with Cori, Don and Patti also had daughters Amity and Adell.
Rachel King (she/her) is a news writer at Town & Country. Before joining T&C, she spent nearly a decade as an editor at Fortune. Her work covering travel and lifestyle has appeared in Forbes, Observer, Robb Report, Cruise Critic, and Cool Hunting, among others. Originally from San Francisco, she lives in New York with her wife, their daughter, and a precocious labradoodle. Follow her on Instagram at .
