Bruins Ranked Fourth in Preseason Pac-12 Coaches, Media Polls

San Francisco, Calif. – The UCLA women's basketball team ranked fourth in both the 2022-23 Pac-12 Women's Basketball Preseason Coaches and Media polls, as announced by the conference office Tuesday.
 
Senior Charisma Osborne returns as UCLA's leading scorer, putting up 16.4 points per game. Osborne ranked third in the Pac-12 in scoring and free throw percentage (.875). Osborne, a two-time Pac-12 Player of the Week, scored in double figures in 25 of the 28 games she played last season.
 
UCLA boasts the highest-ranked freshman class in the country, bringing in three of the top-25 recruits according to espnW HoopGurlz. Freshman Kiki Rice was the No. 2 overall player in the class, followed by Gabriela Jaquez (No. 19) and Londynn Jones (No. 22). Christeen Iwuala cracked the top 50 (No. 49), and German freshman Lina Sontag rounds out the freshman class.
 
The Bruins finished seventh in the Pac-12 for the 2021-22 season. UCLA made a run to the semifinals in the WNIT, finishing 18-13 (8-8 Pac-12).
 
Of the 24 women selected to play in the 2022 McDonald's All American Game, a national-best 11 are on Pac-12 rosters this season in Arizona's Paris Clark and Maya Nnaji, Oregon's Chance Gray and Grace VanSlooten, Oregon State's Raegan Beers and Timea Gardiner, Stanford's Lauren Betts and Indya Nivar, UCLA's Gabriela Jaquez and Kiki Rice, and USC's Aaliyah Gayles.