Inside a surprise dance performance from UCLA women's basketball stars

Before kicking off their March Madness run, three UCLA women's basketball players high kicked their way onto the UCLA dance team for a special halftime performance during the UCLA men's basketball team game against Nebraska on Tuesday night.

It all started with a YouTube video on Bruins guard Charlisse Leger-Walker's channel. The graduate student joined forces with her teammate and senior guard Gabriela Jaquez to challenge the UCLA dance team to teach them an entire halftime routine in just 24 hours.

The catch? Leger-Walker proclaimed that if the video received 1,000 likes, she would perform the routine alongside some of her teammates during a men's basketball game halftime show.

Over 10,000 views later, Leger-Walker and Jaquez recruited teammate Lauren Betts and showed off their dancing skills in front of a crowd at Pauley Pavilion.

"Lauren and I have been wanting to take a dance class in L.A. for a long time," Jaquez told ESPN. "We both grew up dancing, and we love to dance in the locker room and stuff. But this wasn't just like a TikTok dance, it was the real thing. So when Charlisse came up with this idea, we were all-in."

On Sunday night, the Bruins ended their regular season undefeated in the Big Ten with an outright conference title. Before leaving for Indianapolis for the Big Ten tournament, the Bruins got to work on their dance routine.

"We only had one day to officially practice before our performance," Jaquez said. "So we were practicing in the mirror and just preparing any chance we could get."

Standing front and center in the group of Spirit Squad members, the three members of the Bruins team traded in their basketball shorts for basketball-inspired skorts, their alley-oops for pop and locks, and their boxing out for shaking it out.

"This team is all about fun," Betts said. "And this is the type of fun that we like to have. We genuinely love doing things like this together. I never thought something like this would happen but here we are. And I think it just shows the type of chemistry that this team has. Like look at us out here dancing and then winning basketball games."

Perfectly synchronized with the dance team, the women's basketball team members danced to Tate McRae's "Just Keep Watching" for over a minute in front of their teammates and coach Cori Close.

Watching in awe, Close held up her phone to capture the moment and screamed in excitement as her players wowed the crowd.

Next up for the UCLA Bruins basketball team: Maybe "Dancing with the Stars"? Maybe the Rockettes? Maybe a national championship? Only time will tell.