Sienna Betts Scores 15 and Donovyn Hunter Adds 14 as No. 11 UCLA Opens Title Defense With 73-53 Win Over Lehigh

LOS ANGELES. The banner is up, the roster is new, and the defending national champions spent the first half of their title defense trading punches with a Patriot League team. Then the third quarter happened. No. 11 UCLA outscored Lehigh 23-9 coming out of halftime and pulled away for a 73-53 win on Monday, Nov. 2, at Pauley Pavilion to open the 2026-27 season.

Sophomore forward Sienna Betts led the Bruins with 15 points and seven rebounds. TCU transfer Donovyn Hunter added 14 points, four assists, two steals and two blocks in her UCLA debut, and Notre Dame transfer KK Bransford chipped in 10. Leia Edwards paced Lehigh with 14 points and eight rebounds in 37 minutes.

Here is the ESPN box score (opens in a new tab) and UCLA's recap (opens in a new tab).

A Starting Five With No Starts

The opening tip carried a familiar name. Betts won it, just as her sister Lauren used to at UCLA. That is where the familiarity ended. As the Daily Bruin pointed out, not one player in UCLA's starting lineup of Betts, Hunter, Bransford, Elina Aarnisalo and Timea Gardiner had started a game for the Bruins last season.

That is the reality of life after a 37-1 championship run. The Associated Press noted that five of the six players taken in the first round of the WNBA draft came from that UCLA team, Lauren Betts among them, and coach Cori Close is now trying to blend seven new players into something coherent. The Bruins also arrived on a sour note, coming off an 81-64 exhibition loss to No. 6 Texas.

Hunter wasted no time. She scored UCLA's first five points, and Gardiner, back on the floor after redshirting last season with a knee injury, finished an and-one for an 8-2 lead. Betts did the rest of the early work inside, scoring seven of UCLA's 12 paint points in the first quarter, and an Aarnisalo layup made it 17-10.

Lehigh did not blink. Ryann Jennings and Olivia Fleming buried back-to-back 3s in the final minute of the quarter to finish a 7-0 run and tie it at 17. Jennings then opened the second quarter with another triple, and the Mountain Hawks led 20-17 in Westwood.

The Answer Came From Deep

That lead lasted about as long as it took UCLA to walk the ball up the floor. The Bruins ripped off 11 straight points, and the shooting came from three different places: Hunter, Addy Brown and Gardiner each hit a 3 during the burst. Bransford then scored her first points as a Bruin on a layup and turned a steal into two more a few possessions later.

Still, UCLA only took a 32-27 lead into the break, and Close was not pleased. The Mountain Hawks had already launched 13 of their 23 3-point attempts by halftime, according to the AP, well above UCLA's goal of holding Lehigh to 15 or fewer for the entire game. "We just weren't dictating," Close told reporters afterward.

Lehigh coach Addie Micir had her team playing with real poise. The Mountain Hawks finished 9 of 23 from 3 (39 percent), and seven different players made at least one field goal.

Twelve Straight and a Different Team

The third quarter was the one that looked like a Close team. UCLA came out pressing and turned defense into offense right away, with Bransford and Hunter scoring on consecutive steal-and-score possessions. That kicked off a 12-0 run, and Aarnisalo carried the scoring end of it with seven points in the frame.

Aarnisalo's return is its own storyline. The junior guard spent her freshman season at UCLA, played last season at North Carolina, and came back to Pauley to finish with nine points and four assists without a turnover in 29 minutes. Hunter added six points in the quarter, and her layup off a Bonnie Deas steal pushed the lead to 55-36 heading into the fourth.

Lehigh had scored 27 in the first half, much of it on the strength of that early 3-point barrage. In the third, the Mountain Hawks managed nine. UCLA's pressure forced 20 Lehigh turnovers on the day and turned them into 23 points, while the Mountain Hawks scored just 10 off UCLA's 15 giveaways.

Lehigh opened the fourth with five straight points to make it 55-41, but the Bruins answered with 10 of the next 12 and stretched the margin to a game-high 24 at 67-43 with 4:05 left. The Mountain Hawks closed on a 10-6 run to make the final 73-53.

Who Stood Out

Betts went scoreless in the third quarter, then came back with six points in the fourth to finish 7 of 13 from the field. She also had four offensive rebounds, but she turned it over five times, and that number did not escape anyone. "That loss really fired us up and it really exposed our weaknesses, which is good," Betts said of the Texas exhibition, per the AP.

Hunter was the most complete player on the floor. Now on her third school after starting at Oregon State, she shot 6 of 9, made two 3s and filled every column in 30 minutes. "If everyone just has the mindset of 'Do what I'm really good at and give 100% into that,' I think things will flow through," Hunter told the AP.

Bransford, a fifth-year guard who played four seasons at Notre Dame, went 4 of 7 with two steals. The bench added real juice, too. Brown, the Iowa State transfer, had nine points and six rebounds in 24 minutes. Amanda Muse gave 11 efficient minutes with four points and four rebounds. Freshman Somto Okafor hit a 3 for her first college points and led the team with three steals, and Deas, the Arkansas transfer, had two steals.

For Lehigh, Edwards played 37 of 40 minutes and went 6 of 13. Gracyn Lovette added 10 points, Jennings finished with nine on three 3s and a team-best four assists, and Keshia Vitalicio hit both of her 3-point tries for six points off the bench.

The Numbers That Decided It

This game was won in the paint and on the break. UCLA outscored Lehigh 40-18 inside and 15-0 in transition, and the rebounding gap was 41-25 with a 14-3 edge on the offensive glass. The Bruins shot 47 percent overall even while going just 6 of 21 from 3 and 7 of 12 at the line.

UCLA also handed out 20 assists on 30 field goals, which is a decent sign for a group still learning each other's tendencies. The worry is the turnovers. Fifteen against a Patriot League opponent will not play against the teams waiting later in the calendar, and Close said as much to the Daily Bruin, noting it will be "absolutely imperative for this team to get that number below 12 on a consistent basis."

Close was candid about where the group stands. "This group doesn't have one person that's going to put you on their back and just sort of carry the load and make up for everything," she told the AP, adding that the Bruins were "a hopeful group" rather than a confident one so far.

The crowd of 4,697 did not seem to mind the uneven start. It was Field Trip Day, with schoolchildren packing both ends of Pauley Pavilion, and UCLA also put fans in the first six seats on each side of the scorer's table for the first time.

What Comes Next

UCLA (1-0) hosts UC Irvine on Thursday, Nov. 5, then welcomes Arizona to Pauley on Nov. 12. Princeton follows on Nov. 15, then a trip to Tennessee on Nov. 22 and St. John's at the Hall of Fame Women's Showcase in Uncasville, Connecticut, on Nov. 24. The marquee dates come in December: Duke in Phoenix on Dec. 16, on the same court where UCLA beat South Carolina 79-51 for the program's first national title, then South Carolina itself in Las Vegas on Dec. 19.

Lehigh (0-1) leaves Los Angeles with a first half worth keeping on film: 27 points, 13 3-point attempts and a lead over the defending champions on their own floor.

The takeaway is simple. The championship Bruins were built around one dominant force in the middle. This version is a committee, and committees take time. Monday's opener showed the pieces: a playmaking guard in Hunter, a smart returnee in Aarnisalo, a defensive engine in the press, and a Betts who can still own the paint. "Right now we're a lot of hopeful pieces that are really good," Close said. By the third quarter, the pieces were starting to fit.

Sources: ESPN, UCLA Athletics, Associated Press, Daily Bruin.

Photo: Caren Nicdao/UCLA Athletics.