Purdue women's basketball report: UCLA preview, players-only meeting and Kira Reynolds' quintuple-double

The Boilermakers play host to the nation's No. 1 team for the sixth time in program history

Here’s what Purdue 2025 signee Kira Reynolds produced against New Prairie on Saturday. Class 4A No. 5 South Bend Washington won 85-12.

14 points

18 rebounds

12 assists

11 steals

10 blocked shots

According to a story posted in February 2024, there were 13 high school players who accomplished a quintuple-double.

Reynolds became the first girls player in Indiana to total 1,000 points, 1,000 rebounds, 500 blocked shots and 300 assists in a career last week. Reynolds has two sisters at Purdue - Mila and Amiyah - and her brother, Steven Reynolds III, is one of the top recruits in the 2026 class and her dad, Steven Reynolds Jr., is the girls head coach at South Bend Washington.

“Since she was little, five or six years old, we tried to train all the fundamentals,” Reynolds Jr., said. “We wanted them to be players that were impacting the game, not just scoring, though scoring is nice, right? And not just defense, steals or whatever, but we tried to develop the whole thing.

“We prided ourselves as a family on versatility and honestly, of all the kids, Kira is the epitome of that. Kira gleaned from (Mila and Amiyah) and added those things to her game. Now you have this person who can impact the game across the board and give you whatever you need. She's been that for us and it's been huge.”

PREVIEW

A snapshot look at Tuesday’s s matchup between the Boilermakers and the top-ranked Bruins at Mackey Arena:

Time: 7 p.m.

Watch: BTN

Listen: 95.3 BOB-FM

WHAT’S AT STAKE

For the fourth straight time, Purdue faces a ranked team in a Big Ten game. And UCLA can make a strong case as the nation’s best team. The Bruins are No. 1 for a reason and continue to stack together victories, and have adapted to their new conference surroundings. Meanwhile, the Boilermakers will take any victory after starting the league season at 0-3 with losses to Maryland, Iowa, and Michigan State. The last time Purdue hosted the No. 1 team was 2008 when Connecticut played at Mackey Arena.

Katie Gearlds (Mark Elsner Photography)

ABOUT UCLA

• Coach Cori Close’s team continues to pile up victories. Not every win has been of the blowout variety. Saturday’s win at Indiana was by 11 points, and UCLA had to battle the Hoosiers before pulling away down the stretch. Three of the four conference victories have been decided by 16 points or fewer.

“I was also really impressed with our team. I’ve been really challenging them recently to be willing to win ugly, to be willing to win in a gritty way, not a pretty way,” the veteran coach said after the victory in Bloomington. “This wasn’t our best day, but the way they responded to adversity and were willing to just win ugly. I’m impressed with their growth and maturity in that area.”

• It’s hard to find a weakness with the Bruins. They rank first in the Big Ten in six categories - assists, field goal percentage, field goal percentage defense, rebounding margin, defensive rebounds, and rebounds per game. Opponents are shooting just 35.5% from 2-point range against UCLA.

• If opponents don’t connect on their first shot, they’ll unlikely get a second chance. The Bruins are allowing 7.3 second-chance points this season.

• Lauren Betts is one reason why the defense is strong. The 6-foot-7 junior is an imposing figure in the lane and challenging to guard on the offensive end. In last year’s meeting at Pauley Pavilion, Betts totaled 20 points and seven rebounds in her Bruins debut. This season, Betts is averaging 19.8 points and is shooting 61.5% from the field. She has posted nine double-doubles through 15 games. Betts is a candidate for national player of the year along with USC’s JuJu Watkins.

• This team is more than Betts. KiKi Rice is the team’s point guard and has improved her shooting by 11 percentage points since last season and is more consistent from 3-point range. Rice surpassed the 1,000-point mark during the win over Nebraska last month. Gabriela Jaquez is the team’s third-leading scorer behind Betts and Rice and totaled 11 points and six rebounds in the win at Indiana. Angela Dugalic leads the Bruins in steals.

• Fun fact about Jaquez. She was recruited by the school’s softball team to be a pinch runner during last year’s postseason. She scored against Georgia in NCAA Super Regionals on May 23.

Rashunda Jones (Dave Weigel Photography)

ABOUT PURDUE

• During her radio show Monday night, coach Katie Gearlds was asked by host Tim Newton about the team’s will, fight and the mood during a frustrating 7-7 season.

“A team that's worked hard,” Gearlds said. “They've rolled up their sleeves and they've worked their tails off ever since the Michigan State game. They've had some player-only meetings. They came up to the office - all 13 of them - and we sat around the conference table. They had a heart to heart, and owned up to a lot of things that were going wrong on the court.

“We just told each other we're going to continue to hold each other accountable. Since that players-only meeting, I told them, ‘It can only happen once. (If) we're having a players-only meeting again, it's not going to fix anything. We're not going to have any progress.’ ”

Gearlds added: “We have a collective group that’s taken control of where we want to go and where we think we can go.”

Whether the Boilermakers received a bump from the players-only meeting against the best team in the country is likely a longshot. In Tuesday’s game, though, curious to see how Gearlds’ team responds and what type of fight they demonstrate early in the game.

• The Boilermakers did practice at least once on the upstairs court inside Lambert Fieldhouse since the loss to the Spartans.

• Not expecting a lineup change, but Gearlds continues to praise the combination that started the second half at Michigan State - Amiyah Reynolds, Mahri Petree, Ella Collier, Kendall Puryear, and Lana McCarthy.

• The Boilermakers know about facing this talented Bruins team. They opened the 2023-24 season in Los Angeles, dropping a 92-49 decision at Pauley Pavilion. UCLA brings back familiar faces but Purdue’s roster is different than a year ago. Rashunda Jones was a freshman last year and played her first collegiate game against the Bruins.

“Coming in as a freshman last year definitely gave me a little bit of experience of what this year will be like,” Jones said. “UCLA was really good then, and they're really good now.”

• It’s been documented, and the start to the Big Ten schedule is brutal. The Boilermakers begin the conference season facing five straight ranked teams, including Saturday when No. 25 Michigan comes to town. It’s difficult to remember another conference team starting the season under these circumstances.

Of the seven losses, six are to ranked teams - Notre Dame, South Carolina, Maryland, Kentucky, Iowa and Michigan State. The other loss came against Middle Tennessee State in Florida. Upcoming on the schedule is a trip to Washington and Oregon, a home matchup against No. 4 USC and games against Illinois and Nebraska before the end of the month.

The challenge facing Gearlds is making sure her team doesn’t lose confidence during this stretch.

“Just trying to keep everything in perspective,” Gearlds said during Monday’s media session. “But let’s go through it. South Carolina. Notre Dame. I always tell our group - I'll be brutally honest with you; we can’t beat those guys. Kentucky is smashing everybody. That’s three great teams.

“Maryland at home and we’re playing them to a four-point game with two and a half minutes to go. Just don't finish it. And ultimately, that's on us. At Iowa, not one person on our team had been in front of 15,000 fans in Iowa City before. It's an eight-point game with 13 minutes to go and we don't finish. At Michigan State, they have two losses on the year, and we walked into their house after both of those losses.”

The Boilermakers are getting “punched in the mouth” early against the elite teams and are forced to battle back in the second half. But the deficits are too big to overcome.

Gearlds goes back to the word perspective.

“Do we have seven losses? Yes, but what can we take from those games and still believe that we are getting better,” she said. “That's a very long winded answer, but that's a lot of the communication we've had with each other and a lot of brutally honest conversations.”

• After struggling in the first quarter the last two games, the Boilermakers are forced to play uphill the rest of the way. There’s been too much work to do for a team that has a small margin of error.

“In the second half, we get going but we're out the game and it’s too late,” Jones said. “I think coming out better prepared, and coming out with confidence.”

• As Gearlds mentioned, Purdue faced Michigan State when it was coming off consecutive losses. The Spartans were looking to take their frustrations out on their next opponent and that happened to be the Boilermakers.

Purdue has lost two in a row and it would help if this year’s team adopted a similar attitude.

“Got to be nasty to start the game,” she said. “I think we've been a little bit lackadaisical or too little soft to start the game. We’ve got to be nasty. We’ve got to be dirty. We’ve got to be tough, physical and we've got to be able to keep punching and not just take punches.”

• Tuesday is the sixth time the Boilermakers will face the top-ranked team at Mackey Arena. Purdue is 2-10 all-time against the No. 1 team with both victories coming at home against Penn State (1994) and Tennessee (1998). Other No. 1 teams to play at Mackey - Iowa (1988), Tennessee (1994) and Connecticut (2008).

PRESSING QUESTION

Can the Boilermakers survive the first quarter against UCLA? Iowa and Michigan State built early double-digit leads and Purdue was forced to play from behind. Getting behind the Bruins likely doesn’t end well for the Boilermakers, who have struggled to score against elite defensive teams this season. And UCLA is an elite defensive team.