LOS ANGELES (AP) — UCLA has hired Cori Close as its new women’s basketball coach, giving the former Bruins assistant her first head coaching job.
Close’s hiring was announced at a campus news conference on Thursday.
She spent the last seven seasons as an assistant at Florida State. Close was a Bruins assistant in 1994 and ’95.
Before moving to Florida State, Close was an assistant from 1995-04 at UC Santa Barbara, where she played college basketball before graduating in 1993.
Close succeeds Nikki Caldwell, who resigned to take the LSU job earlier this month.
Under Caldwell, UCLA went 72-26, reaching the NCAA tournament twice. She was the Pac-10 coach of the year in 2010, when the Bruins reached the second round of the NCAA tournament and finished 25-9.