This post was updated March 16 at 10:53 p.m. 

“We want Meg.”

Less than three minutes remain in a home game at Pauley Pavilion.

The Bruins are winning by a margin that requires a second look at the scoreboard.

Yet a small, but vocal, section of fans is not satisfied.

Coach Cori Close calls senior guard/forward Megan Grant up off the bench.

And the stands erupt in cheers as if the Bruins just hit a buzzer-beater, despite essentially clinching the victory at halftime.

UCLA women’s basketball and UCLA softball have forged a connection across the past three years with a pair of dual-sport athletes.

The partnership began when senior guard Gabriela Jaquez joined the softball team as a utility for the 2024 season. Jaquez, who played softball in high school at Adolfo Camarillo High School alongside redshirt junior utility Rylee Pinedo, would take some swings in the batting cages for fun when she was not playing basketball.

“Gabs would always come up to the field and practice,” Grant said. “We would have fun, hitting her ground balls, hitting in the cage, because she’s really close with us, and that was before she even decided to hop onto the team. But when she did, I was so proud of her. Now, looking at it on this side, it’s really hard to do both sports, and it’s really cool that she paved the way for me.”

Jaquez made an appearance in the 2024 NCAA Super Regional against Georgia, where she recorded her first run with the team off a home run from then-sophomore infielder Jordan Woolery. Jaquez had already made a name for herself during her sophomore basketball campaign, logging a 30-point night and three double-doubles across the season.

Just as Grant’s softball teammates go to basketball games to chant, “We want Meg,” Jaquez’s basketball teammates were in the stands when she crossed home plate for the first time.

“They see how happy I am and the smile on my face when I talk about it,” Jaquez told the Daily Bruin at the time. “I really appreciated them coming out to support me and also the team, watch us play. They’re impressed by these girls.”

This season, the basketball team has returned to Easton Stadium to cheer on Grant. Senior center Lauren Betts even threw the first pitch at Saturday’s home game.

And after catching the ball, Grant ran out to give her teammate a hug.

The relationship between the programs is a rare one.

While UCLA legend Jackie Robinson was famously a four-sport athlete in the late 1930s, the modern athletic landscape demands specialization. Young athletes often pick what sport they will devote their careers to when they are in middle school, or sometimes even younger, to reach the Division I level.

Grant, for instance, committed to play softball for UCLA when she was just 12 years old.

The physical demands of training for two high-level sports are intense and do not necessarily always yield transferable results across disciplines. Being a dual-sport athlete generally has to stem from a love for the game rather than a desire to excel on the statsheet.

But playing two sports is also rewarding, Grant said.

“I really stretched my mental capacity for what I could do with my body, but it was totally worth it,” Grant said. “I ended up getting more fit and that physical part got a lot easier, but building that mental part, it was awesome.”

According to NCAA statistics, just 1.4% of female high school basketball players will join a Division I program. And just 2% of high school softball players make the same jump.

But Grant and Jaquez are a pair of anomalies who have done both.

Grant’s addition to the women’s basketball team has been a more recent one.

The decision to play basketball was not due to a lack of success in the softball sphere – Grant is a First Team NFCA All-American who holds the Big Ten record for most single-season home runs.

Grant said basketball was her first love. And UCLA softball coach Kelly Inouye-Perez worked with Close to help the senior join the basketball team in her final collegiate year.

Four games into the season, Grant scored her first points against North Carolina on Nov. 13. Close called on Grant at the end of the bench to sub in at her usual mark, with less than two minutes remaining in a lopsided contest.

And just under 10 seconds remained on the game clock as Grant grabbed an offensive board and lobbed it off the glass for her first collegiate points.

“I was like, ‘Get a rebound,’” Grant said. “Because that team, we’ve always got goals going within the game. And after I got the rebound, I just blacked out. It was a complete blackout. I don’t know what happened after that.”

Not a single person was left sitting on the Bruins’ bench after Grant’s basket fell through the net. Close even recreated Grant’s signature dance in the locker room.

“One of the things that’s really fun about her is that the humility it takes to be arguably the No. 1 softball player in the country right now and on top of that to come in and say, ‘Hey, whatever role you need me to play, coach,’” Close said. “I never thought that she would have the depth of impact on our team that she has, and it’s just been wonderful. … This year will always be remembered in part by what Megan Grant has brought to our team.”

Neither Jaquez nor Grant has made a significant statistical impact on the softball or women’s basketball teams, respectively.

Jaquez’s resume starts and ends with the sole run she scored in 2024, and Grant logged just six points and four rebounds in her time with the basketball team before her senior softball campaign began.

But their additions to the respective programs have helped foster a winning ethos.

As UCLA women’s basketball enters the postseason, the aftertaste of last year’s blowout Final Four loss lingers.

When asked about the difference between this campaign and the last one on Selection Sunday, graduate student forward Angela Dugalić identified the joy the Bruins were playing with – a feeling she said Grant brought to the team.

Close jumped in to echo this sentiment.

“Megan Grant always says, ‘Choose joy,’” Close said. “That joy is not just happiness. Joy is a choice. Joy is a character trait. Joy is a cultural commitment we’ve made as a program to celebrate each other. And that’s what’s been really cool, is that they have chosen joy over and over again.”

It requires talent to win.

But UCLA women’s basketball’s NCAA tournament run – one that is projected to take it to a national title game – could prove that joy is the backbone of a championship squad.