Lauren and Sienna Betts are relishing UCLA’s NCAA Tournament run

SACRAMENTO — The childhood photo says it all about Lauren and Sienna Betts.

The sisters are shooting baskets on a Pop-A-Shot arcade game, their personalities revealed in a single image.

Lauren, the older sibling, stands properly positioned on the ground, patiently waiting to take a shot.

Meanwhile, Sienna has climbed up onto the machine and is about to wildly fling a ball toward the basket.

“I’m like, that’s so them,” their mother, Michelle Betts, recently told The California Post of the photo with a chuckle. “Rule follower, rule breaker.”

The pattern has repeated itself at UCLA, the sisters’ latest basketball stop.

After being told in a timeout huddle that she wasn’t supposed to stand beyond the 3-point arc because that spot was reserved for shooters, Sienna came out and unleashed a shot from long range.

After it went in, the freshman forward pointed at coach Cori Close.

“No matter what happened, I was going to shoot that,” Sienna said this week, prompting Lauren to laugh as she sat next to her sibling. “Stuck it to her.”

What Close loved most about the moment besides what she called Sienna’s “audacious confidence” was who was there to celebrate with her. At the next timeout, Lauren sprinted over to chest-bump her sister, grins splitting both of their faces.

“Any time Sienna looks like she’s radiating happiness,” Lauren said, “that’s a positive moment for me.”

The backstory makes it all the more touching for sisters who are trying to win a national championship in their one college season together before Lauren moves on to the WNBA.

“When you know that Sienna almost didn’t come because Lauren came,” Close said, “that takes it up to another level.”

Betts sisters almost didn’t play together

They’ve danced together at practice, fed each other passes in the post and recorded double-doubles in the same NCAA Tournament game.

It seems hard to believe they almost didn’t play together.

Their mother worried that might be the case after Lauren transferred to UCLA after a rough freshman season at Stanford. The fear was that Sienna — known for being fiercely independent — didn’t want people to think she was just following her sister wherever she went.

Trying to nudge her younger daughter toward Westwood, Michelle took her on college visits to other schools in the middle of winter.

“I took Sienna to those places so she could kind of figure out, do I really like it this much?” Michelle said. “Do I really not want to play with my sister this much?”

Another assist came from Lauren. As Sienna sat in a UCLA basketball office on a recruiting visit, Lauren put on a PowerPoint presentation she had made while she was in the transfer portal, hoping her younger sister would join her as a Bruin.

The presentation included highlights of their playing together at a Colorado high school and bullet points listing all the ways Lauren would help her sister as a freshman.

With Michelle watching on FaceTime, Sienna broke down crying.

“Everybody’s crying,” Michelle said. “It was marvelous.”

Sienna said she was planning on committing to UCLA anyway but appreciated the nudge.

“I thought that was really, really sweet,” Sienna said. “It was nice to know Lauren wanted it so much.”

Sienna wanted it, too, so long as everyone understood she was forging her own path.

After declaring her plans, Sienna asked her mom to order Lauren to go on social media to announce that her sibling was not following her, that she wanted to go to UCLA all on her own.

“She was dead serious,” Michelle said.

Michelle understood the likelihood of her daughters living together.

“Heck no,” she said with a laugh.

Added uncle Jason Jones: “Not a chance.”

Sisters honor parents’ athletic heritage

The family athletic heritage is reflected in their jerseys.

Sienna wears No. 16, the number her mom wore as a volleyball player at Long Beach State.

Lauren wears No. 51, the number her dad, Andy, wore as a basketball player at the same college where he met Michelle before going on to a lengthy professional career in Europe.

Their games are complementary enough that Lauren, at 6 feet 7, can play alongside her 6-4 sister. Close runs her offense through Lauren, the senior center whose team-leading averages of 17.1 points and 8.7 rebounds only begin to tell the story of why she’s a finalist for the Naismith Award that goes to the nation’s top college player.

Since making her debut in mid-December after returning from a leg injury, Sienna has been a reliable contributor off the bench, averaging 6.6 points and 4.2 rebounds heading into the top-seeded Bruins’ Sweet 16 game against fourth-seeded Minnesota on Friday afternoon at the Golden 1 Center.

The sisters delighted their teammates before the season by spontaneously breaking into a synchronized dance when “#thatPOWER” by Will.i.am featuring Justin Bieber came over the sound system during practice.

Spotting a glimpse of the moves, Close ordered the song to be restarted so that the sisters could display the full routine they had performed for fun growing up.

“We’ve done it 1,000 times together,” Sienna said, “so it’s kind of muscle memory.”

The sisters live in separate apartments but have shown signs of a deepening bond. Michelle noticed her daughters went Christmas shopping together when they returned home for the holidays.

“I was like, what?” Michelle said. “Y’all are going to go together?”

Of course, they were. Knowing they’ll go their separate ways soon enough, they are savoring every shared moment.

“We want to just take advantage of every opportunity to play together and just enjoy these last few weeks together that we have,” Lauren said, “and just play as hard as we can so that we can just get extra time on the team together.”

It’s maybe the one way in which siblings who are so different could be considered identical.

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