Class of 2022 5-star guard Kiki Rice commits to UCLA women’s basketball
No. 20 UCLA women’s basketball secured the commitment from guard Kiki Rice on Thursday. Rice is the No. 2-ranked player in the class of 2022. (Lauren Man/Daily Bruin senior staff)
By Francis Moon
Nov. 4, 2021 3:24 p.m.
This post was updated Nov. 4 at 3:39 p.m.
The Bruins have already secured their first win of the season.
Class of 2022 five-star guard Kiki Rice committed to No. 20 UCLA women’s basketball during an Instagram Live session Thursday. The No. 2-ranked player in her class by ESPN, Rice also had Stanford, Connecticut, Arizona and Duke in her final five and was the last player in the top 10 to announce her decision.
The commitment from Rice makes her the highest-ranked recruit for coach Cori Close since she took over as head coach in 2011 and pushes the Bruins’ 2022 recruiting class into the top spot in the country.
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“I’m really excited to get to hang out and spend time with my teammates,” Rice said in her live-streamed event Thursday. “We have a great recruiting class I’m coming in with, and the team there is already great, so I’m just really excited to get out there.”
Rice is the seventh player in the 2022 class set to join the Bruins next year, a class that has five players ranked in the ESPN HoopGurlz Recruiting Rankings and was ranked No. 2 in the country before Rice’s commitment.
The 5-foot-11-inch guard currently attends Sidwell Friends School in Washington, D.C., where she averaged 26.8 points, 10.7 rebounds and 4.7 assists per game in her most recent season as a sophomore in 2019-2020. Rice also competed in the 2019 FIBA U16 Americas World Championship, helping Team USA win the gold medal.
Although her high school team did not compete last season, this past summer, Rice was selected to Team USA’s 2021 3×3 U18 World Cup basketball roster, which also took home the title.
“I’m really an up-tempo, versatile guard,” Rice said. “I love to pass or rebound, defend, do everything, so just a winning player who’s going to help cut down some nets.”
UCLA currently has 10 guards on its roster compared to four healthy forwards, but it could lose up to eight players on its roster this season to graduation.
