Box Score By Jerry Hill
Baylor Bear Foundation
In 16-plus seasons under Kim Mulkey, the Baylor Lady Bears have had more than their fair share of blowout victories against overmatched and undersized opponents.
This one, though, was historic.
To the delight of a season-high crowd of 6,440, including 2,500 elementary children bused in for the Thursday afternoon game at the Ferrell Center, the third-ranked Lady Bears routed Winthrop, 140-32, to set an NCAA record for the largest margin of victory.
"You've got to pick your poison, and we didn't pick any," said Winthrop coach Kevin Cook, whose team fell to 1-9 with its ninth straight loss. "They hurt us inside, they hurt us with 3-pointers. I'll be watching this group in the Final Four."
As Mulkey put it, "We could have beaten a lot of teams today. We were just clicking on all cylinders."
The thing is, Baylor (11-1) was playing without arguably its best player. Senior guard Alexis Jones sat out her second straight game to rest her surgically repaired knees.
And Mulkey did her best to divvy up the minutes, with all 12 available players getting between 13 and 21 minutes. At one point, she had freshman guards Juicy Landrum and Alexandria Gulley on the floor at the same time with sophomore Alyssa Dry.
Khadijah Cave (25), Alexis Prince (23) and Lauren Cox (23) set career highs for points, Kalani Brown notched her fourth career double-double with 17 points and 12 rebounds and Beatrice Mompremier finished one point shy of her own double-double with nine points and a career high-tying 17 boards.
"I tried and played tons of people, in and out of the lineup; called timeouts, trying to get people off the floor," Mulkey said. "I am most grateful that Coach Cook recognized that, because if you coach long enough, you're going to have games like this and you're not going to be on the winning end. . . . I tried everything I knew to try, because I respect (Coach Cook), but more importantly I respect the game."
Winthrop, in the NCAA Tournament just three years ago, was outscored 21-0 in the first 4 ½ minutes of the game. The Eagles turned it over five times in that stretch and missed their first three shots before Danyael Goodhope ended the shutout with a pair of free throws at the 5:27 mark.
Goodhope scored all six of Winthrop's first-quarter points and finished with 10, while senior forward Erica Williams hit a bank-shot, buzzer-beating 3-pointer and tallied 15 points.
Baylor had a 38-6 lead after the first quarter and stretched it to 77-18 at the break, setting school records for most points in a half and biggest halftime lead.
"This was a good sendoff, this being our last non-conference game," said Cave, who was a near-perfect 11-of-12 from the floor, putting back her own miss. "Everybody played well today, and we all got to see different lineups and matchups. We just had fun and played really good team basketball."
The 6-foot-4 Cox took over at the end of the third quarter, scoring 14 of the Lady Bears' last 18 points as they went up 111-32. She scored the 100th point off a steal and assist from Landrum as the crowd erupted.
"I'm starting to feel more comfortable," said Cox, who added eight rebounds, four blocks, three assists and two steals in 19 minutes. "I'm hitting my shots and hitting free throws, getting easy buckets."
She's also blocking shots with authority. Cox was part of a school-record 17 blocks, breaking the previous mark of 16 set by Brittney Griner and friends in a 2010 NCAA Tournament game against Georgetown.
"I played volleyball in high school, so that's where that comes from," Cox said of her ability to swat shots into the seats. "It helps when you have a couple bigs in the back to clean up if somebody gets by you."
Baylor's defense held the visiting Eagles to a meager 13.6 percent shooting for the game (9-of-66), including 0-for-16 in a scoreless fourth quarter. The Lady Bears finished with a 75-25 edge on the boards, dominated points in the paint, 84-12, and scored 34 more second-chance points than Winthrop (38-4).
"Other than winning, the only stat that matters to me is field goal defense," said Mulkey, whose team was ranked second nationally coming in at 30.9, a figure that fell to 29.2. "I'm not sure where we are, but I thought our defense was good. We did some 1-3-1 (zone) with the big lineup early, which I wanted to do. We did some trapping out of that, and you never know if we'll have to use that."
The Lady Bears also set school single-game records for most made field goals (58, 2 shy of the NCAA record), assists (42, 1 shy of NCAA record), rebounds (75) and blocks (17, 2 shy of the NCAA record).
Coming back from a 13-day break, Baylor opens Big 12 play against Kansas State (9-1) with a 7 p.m. tip at the Ferrell Center in a game that will be televised by Fox Sports-Plus.
