With two minutes and 56 seconds remaining in the NCAA women’s national championship game, the rock found UCLA’s star guard Gabriela Jaquez, a full stride behind the three-point stripe. The savvy veteran squared up as an opposing defender rushed to close out. With the rhythmic, fluid bravura of a professional assassin, Jaquez let it rip from deep. Splash.

Here’s the best part about it: the shot began as a botched attempt. Jaquez initially missed at the rim, before diving to the ground and battling for the loose ball. After tipping it to a teammate, she got up and began to weave through defenders off the ball, allowing everything around her to reset and develop. Eventually, she found herself waiting in the right position to receive, and drain, an open look. That’s Jaquez Basketball 101.

The play was an emphatic nail in the coffin as UCLA went ahead of the South Carolina Gamecocks 79-45 in the closing minutes of the commanding victory on April 5. For Jaquez, it would be her final points as a Bruin, as she went to the bench with a standing ovation. 

In a Zoom interview with SLAM, she offered a simple adjective when asked to describe her style of play: “Tough.” For what it’s worth, I don’t think anyone would disagree.

It’s a fitting ending for the standout senior and her teammates, who dominated the field throughout the season, finishing 37-1 and winning the Big Ten Conference ahead of March Madness. At their peak, UCLA notched 31 consecutive dubs. During that stretch, Jaquez outpaced every other Bruin—on a roster of All-Americans and WNBAers that included Lauren Betts, Kiki Rice and Angela Dugalic—with the highest plus-minus differential.

But Jaquez has never been distracted by individual accolades. Her main assignment was to deliver a chip to SoCal. As a young girl, she dreamed of winning the natty at UCLA—something she wrote down in grade school and has kept as a reminder over a decade later. 

Finally achieving that goal was a masterful oeuvre to cap a memorable four-year journey at UCLA, where she evolved into one of the most important and consistently impactful players in the program’s storied mythology. The 6-foot Mexican American did it all in Westwood, finishing the season with impressive 54/39/86 shooting splits. The former McDonald’s All-American Game co-MVP averaged 13.5 points, 5.5 boards and 2.1 dimes per contest.

On April 13, roughly a week after the season concluded, Jaquez again made history when her name was announced as the fifth overall pick in the 2026 WNBA Draft. In joining the Chicago Sky, she became one of the rare Mexican-heritage players in the League’s existence. (Currently, Lou Lopez Sénéchal, a Mexican-French player on the Dallas Wings, is the only Mexican citizen in the W; Jaquez, who is a dual citizen of both the United States and Mexico and plays for Mexico at the international level, will double that number).

What’s most impressive is that Jaquez will become the first and only WNBA player to ever represent Mexico in FIBA, going back to the League’s origin. “Playing in Mexico has been great,” says Jaquez, who made her international debut in 2024 and led Mexico with 19 points in a win against Mozambique. “It’s important that Mexico gets the support. We can be really good. But the support isn’t there yet.”

Jaquez, whose older brother Jaime balled out at UCLA on his way to joining the Miami Heat in 2023, largely credits her family for her unprecedented triumphs in the sport. Together, Gabriela and Jaime will become the first pair of Mexican-heritage siblings to simultaneously play in the WNBA and NBA. But in particular, Gabriela highlights her mom, Angela, who was a standout collegiate baller at Concordia University in California, where she was later inducted into the school’s Hall of Fame. Notably, Mrs. Jaquez tried out for the Los Angeles Sparks in the WNBA’s inaugural season in 1997. Though she didn’t make the final cut, Gabriela references that as a proud part of her family’s unique basketball legacy, which she is now piloting forward.

“My mom coached me growing up,” says Jaquez. “Once I got older, she stopped coaching me because she said I had too much attitude, so I was like, OK, fine. But a lot of people say I play like my mom. When her college teammates come to watch [UCLA games], they say I literally play like my mom.”

Beyond any flashy metrics, Jaquez exerts an intangible grit that visibly sets her apart from the rest of the pack. In an interview with ESPN’s Rich Eisen, UCLA coach Cori Close credited Jaquez’s “warrior’s spirit” as a major factor in the team’s success and indomitable DNA. Close pointed out Jaquez’s reliability as a playmaker, especially in clutch situations, and how, playing AAU in high school, Jaquez established a reputation all over California for being able to make tough shots in game-winning circumstances. 

As a Bruin, Jaquez not only lived up to the school’s reputation for basketball excellence—she exceeded it. Since the NCAA legally instituted women’s basketball in 1981, thanks to Title IX, the federal civil rights law passed in 1972 that prohibits any gender discrimination in sports and allowed women’s basketball players like UCLA’s Ann Meyers Drysdale to receive athletic scholarships for the first time ever—the UCLA women’s squad hadn’t won a championship. Leave it to Jaquez and her incredible team of super seniors to fix that.

In a non-committal era defined by the transfer portal, post-realignment disorder and NIL, Jaquez stood on business and finished the job as a homegrown kid. She graduated a semester early with a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology and a minor in Education at her dream school. UCLA’s Latino Alumni Association even launched the Jaquez Family Scholarship Fund in honor of Gabriela and her brother Jaime, which awards financial support to incoming freshmen and transfer students from underrepresented backgrounds. 

Next up, Jaquez will look to make an impact at the professional level.

“Growing up as a Lakers fan, I watched Kobe Bryant. He was inspiring for me. And I’m a big LeBron fan,” she says. “In the WNBA, there’s obviously so much talent, too. A’ja Wilson. Napheesa Collier. It’s crazy that I’ll be there.”

Photos via Getty Images.