National champion UCLA has a record night at the WNBA draft with 5 first-round picks and 6 overall

NEW YORK (AP) — The party isn't over for UCLA's national champions. The Bruins had another big celebration at the WNBA draft.

Lauren Betts, Gabriela Jaquez and Kiki Rice were taken with picks Nos. 4-6 on Monday night, barely a week after helping the Bruins win their first NCAA championship. UCLA became the first team to have five first-round selections, and the first with six players selected in one draft.

In a whirlwind stretch where the Bruins were feted from coast to coast, the good times hit their peak at the draft, where the best team this season took its place among the best of all time.

“It’s really hard to sum up because there’s so much,” Jaquez said. “I think that we’re just on a high right now. We just won the national championship. A lot of us have also graduated college, which is a huge step and something to be super proud of, especially at UCLA. And then we got to go to Jimmy Kimmel, a Laker game, Clipper game, dance, have the celebration at Pauley Pavilion. We went on ‘Good Morning America’ this morning. Obviously, a lot of us are here at the draft tonight being drafted. It’s just been a special moment.”

The 6-foot-7 Betts was selected by the Washington Mystics, with Jaquez then taken by the Chicago Sky. The expansion Toronto Tempo made Rice their first draft pick with the No. 6 selection.

With coach Cori Close sitting up front near her players, the Bruins kept having reasons to stand up and cheer. They were going so quickly that after Angela Dugalic was taken at No. 9 to join Betts in Washington, she worried she’d miss witnessing more big moments for her teammates.

Betts said she wasn’t surprised, having watched how hard her teammates worked.

“These are like my sisters, and getting to watch your family do something like that is amazing,” Betts said. “But I mean, this team is just so special. We knew the type of players that we had on the team, and to really just have this night really showcase all of the things that we’ve worked on all season is just amazing.”

UCLA went 37-1, routing South Carolina on April 5 in the title game — with their seniors scoring all of their points in the Final Four — and then made WNBA history when Gianna Kneepkens was drafted by Connecticut with the 15th and final pick of the first round. Close has said she doesn't care about records, but that changed Monday.

“Well, I mean, I sort of do care about this one actually, because No. 1, it helps us in recruiting. I think we’ve really taken a developmental approach to this and to see it come to fruition the way it has is obviously really gratifying,” she said.

“Just to be a part of an historic night and for them to be so excited for each other, that’s sort of representative of how they’ve been all year long. But it’s a pretty cool record to be a part of.”

UConn had the previous record of four first-round selections — all in the first six picks — in 2002. Sue Bird was No. 1, Swin Cash No. 2, Asjha Jones No. 4 and Tamika Williams No. 6 from a team that went 39-0.

Tennessee, in 1999 and again in 2008, had five players selected in the draft, as did Notre Dame in 2019 and South Carolina in 2023. But those players weren’t all taken in the first round.

“I think it definitely demonstrates that being a selfless team, that maybe giving up individual stats for team success, that you can win with that formula. You can still be successful. You can win at a high level as a team but you can also achieve individual goals,” Rice said.

“We knew we all wanted to go to the WNBA. We all wanted to be pros, but that wasn’t the only focus during the season. It was winning, it was giving to each other, it was how can we be the best team possible. In the process of doing that, we still got the results that we wanted to at the end of the day, and that’s something that is really special.”

Charlisse Leger-Walker was taken by the Sun in the second round, set to remain teammates with Kneepkens.

The Bruins went to dinner together while in New York and were going to spend more time together after the draft. But Kneepkens said they wouldn't be saying their goodbyes yet.

“Yeah, those girls mean the most to me, and good thing we live in this day and age and we have phones,” she said. “So hopefully we’ll keep in touch, and obviously we’ll see each other around.”

AP Basketball Writer Doug Feinberg contributed to this report.

AP WNBA: https://apnews.com/hub/wnba-basketball

UCLA center Lauren Betts hugs her mother Michelle after being selected fourth overall by the Washington Mystics in the first round of the WNBA basketball draft Monday, April 13, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Pamela Smith)

UCLA guard Gabriela Jaquez poses with WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert after being selected fifth overall by the Chicago Sky in the first round of the WNBA basketball draft Monday, April 13, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Pamela Smith)

UCLA guard Gabriela Jaquez hugs family after being selected fifth overall by the Chicago Sky in the first round of the WNBA basketball draft Monday, April 13, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Pamela Smith)

UCLA guard Kiki Rice poses with WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert after being selected sixth overall by the Toronto Tempo in the first round of the WNBA basketball draft Monday, April 13, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Pamela Smith)

UCLA center Lauren Betts poses with WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert after being selected fourth overall by the Washington Mystics in the first round of the WNBA basketball draft Monday, April 13, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Pamela Smith)

NEW YORK (AP) — The U.S. stock market is nearing its all-time high Tuesday, and oil prices are easing as hopes climb that the United States and Iran may try again on talks to end their war and avoid a worst-case scenario for the global economy.

The S&P 500 rose 1% after rallying the day before back to where it was before the United States and Israel launched attacks on Iran in late February. It's just 0.4% below its record and on track for its ninth gain in the last 10 days.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 313 points, or 0.6%, as of noon Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 1.6% higher.

They followed gains for stock markets worldwide as Pakistan said it was trying to bring the United States and Iran together for more talks. Such prospects also helped lower the price of oil, whose production and transportation has been snarled by the fighting.

The price for a barrel of Brent crude oil, the international standard, fell 3.8% to $95.56. That’s still above its roughly $70 level from before the war, but it’s well below its peak of $119 reached a couple times when worries about the war hit their heights.

To be sure, hope has often quickly swung into doubt in financial markets since the war began, which has caused extreme and sudden reversals. Much of the stress has been due to the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow waterway that’s the main avenue for crude oil produced in the Persian Gulf area to reach customers worldwide. Blockages there have kept oil off the global market, which has in turn driven up its price.

And that has meant a blast of higher inflation. In the United States, inflation at the wholesale level accelerated to 4% in March from 3.4% the month before, according to the latest data released Tuesday. That was actually better than the 4.6% rate economists expected, but it could filter down to U.S. households if businesses fully pass on the increases.

The effect is worldwide. Global inflation this year looks set to accelerate to 4.4% from 4.1% in 2025, according to the International Monetary Fund, which had earlier thought inflation would slow to 3.8%.

The IMF on Tuesday also downgraded its forecast for global economic growth to 3.1% this year from the 3.3% it had forecast in January.

On Wall Street, strong profit reports from several companies and expectations for more helped make up for such worries. At their heart, stock prices tend to follow the path of corporate profits over the long term.

BlackRock gained 4.5%, and Citigroup rose 2.9% after the financial companies reported stronger profit and revenue for the latest quarter than analysts expected.

JPMorgan Chase also delivered a better-than-expected quarter, but its stock dipped 0.7% as CEO Jamie Dimon said bank officials cannot predict how the “increasingly complex set of risks” will play out given so much uncertainty.

Amazon climbed 3.3% after saying it would buy Globalstar, a mobile satellite services company, for $90 per share in either cash or Amazon stock. Globalstar jumped 10.7%.

Software companies also rallied for a second day, recovering more of their sharp losses from earlier in the year taken on worries that they could be made obsolete by artificial-intelligence technology. AppLovin rose 3.1%, and an ETF from iShares tracking the software industry added 1.4%.

That in turn helped private-credit companies rebound. These companies have lent money to software businesses and others that may be under threat from AI, and they've seen investors rush to try to pull their money recently.

Blue Owl Capital rose 8% to trim its loss for the year so far below 39%. Ares Management climbed 5.8%, and Apollo Global Management rose 3.7%.

They helped offset a 4.8% drop for Wells Fargo, which reported weaker revenue for the latest quarter than analysts expected.

In stock markets abroad, indexes rose across much of Europe and Asia. South Korea’s Kospi jumped 2.7%, and Japan’s Nikkei 225 rose 2.4% for two of the bigger gains.

In the bond market, Treasury yields ticked lower as the fall for oil prices took pressure off inflation. The yield on the 10-year Treasury fell to 4.27% from 4.30% late Monday.

AP Business Writers Chan Ho-him and Matt Ott contributed to this report.

People work on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange in New York, Monday, April 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

People work on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange in New York, Monday, April 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

A person walks in front of an electronic stock board showing New York Dow, Japan's Nikkei, and Topix indexes at a securities firm Tuesday, April 14, 2026, in Tokyo. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)

A person walks in front of an electronic stock board showing Japan's Nikkei index at a securities firm Tuesday, April 14, 2026, in Tokyo. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)

People walk in front of an electronic stock board showing Japan's Nikkei index at a securities firm Tuesday, April 14, 2026, in Tokyo. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)

People walk in front of an electronic stock board showing Japan's Nikkei index at a securities firm Tuesday, April 14, 2026, in Tokyo. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)

A person walks in front of an electronic stock board showing Japan's Nikkei index at a securities firm Tuesday, April 14, 2026, in Tokyo. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)