Baylor
36-2
Oregon State
32-4
WBB Falls to Oregon State in Elite 8, 60-57
3/28/2016 12:00:00 AM | Women's Basketball
| 1ST | 2ND | 3RD | 4TH | F | ||
 | OREGON STATE | 16 | 18 | 14 | 12 | 60 |
 | BAYLOR | 11 | 14 | 22 | 10 | 57 |
Box Score | Notes | USATSI Gallery 
| BU Quotes | OSU Quotes
Dallas, Texas - Attendance: 6,050
By Jerry Hill
Baylor Bear Foundation
DALLAS, Texas - If possible, this one might hurt even more.
Notre Dame was simply the better team the last two years in handing Baylor back-to-back Elite Eight losses, with the first one coming on the Fighting Irish's home court.
But this time, the Lady Bears were the higher seed and playing in front of what amounted to a home crowd at the American Airlines Center. And with the game and a Final Fourth berth on the line, they just didn't get it done.
Oregon State, clearly a new kid on the block, made clutch plays down the stretch and walked off the floor Monday night with a stunning 60-57 victory to punch its first-ever ticket to the Final Four for a date with three-time defending national champion Connecticut.
"We can analyze the game, but the bottom line is it's a tie ball game with a minute and a half to go . . . and we didn't hit the clutch shots," said Baylor coach Kim Mulkey, whose team finished 36-2, the second-most wins in program history. "We hit those clutch shots, we might be celebrating and cutting the nets down. We didn't. You give credit to Oregon State, and now they get to go play UConn."
Seemingly fighting an uphill battle all night, the Lady Bears clawed their way back from a nine-point halftime deficit to take a 51-50 lead with 6:54 left on a Nina Davis layup. But they hit just three of their last 10 shots and turned it over three times with a chance to regain the lead.
On back-to-back empty possessions in the last minute and a half, junior guard Alexis Jones stepped on the baseline and senior point guard Niya Johnson had a lob pass to Davis stolen by 6-6 OSU center Ruth Hamblin.
"You had the ball in the hands of the people you wanted to have the ball," Mulkey said. "Those were not inexperienced players that had those turnovers, and those kids feel horrible. You had what you wanted, and we just could never take the lead when it was a tie ball game and we made defensive stops and we got a rebound. We just never could get over the hump."
That's what made this loss so devastating.
For the third year in a row, the Lady Bears couldn't get over the hump and get past the Elite Eight. All season long, they wore green wristbands with the slogan "Eight is Not Enough." But in the end, eight's all they got.
"Any loss is tough, but I guess you can say this one hurts a little bit more because it's three years in a row," said Davis, a second-team All-American who had 11 points on 5-of-11 shooting from the field. "We played hard. I can't say it was lack of effort. We fell short by one, and any loss is just always tough."
It was particularly disappointing for Johnson and fellow seniors Kristina Higgins and Chardonae Fuqua, Baylor's first graduating class not to make it to at least one Final Four since the 2009 group.
"You hurt for the three seniors," Mulkey said. "I thought we had an unbelievable, successful season, (but) we did not reach our goal of a Final Four. I thought we played hard, we battled. They just made more free throws than we did and clutch plays than we did."
The Beavers (32-4), who had only one underclassman in their top seven, knocked down 7-of-13 3-pointers in the first half, hit a phenomenal 15-of-18 from the free throw line and won the rebounding battle, 39-33. By comparison, Baylor hit just 1-of-5 from outside the arc and 6-of-14 at the line.
And still, the Lady Bears had a chance right down to the end.
After Sydney Wiese hit one of two free throws to give OSU a 58-57 lead with 33.6 seconds left, Jones had a turn-around jumper from just outside the paint that rimmed out.
"I don't know what to say," said Jones, who had a game-high 19 points to go with six assists, four rebounds and three steals while shooting 7-of-17 from the floor. "I'm still thinking about. I don't know if somebody else was open. I just don't know."
Even after Wiese knocked down a pair of free throws with 7.3 ticks left, pushing the lead to three, Baylor had one more shot at it. But Johnson's forced 3-pointer clanged off the back of the rim as the buzzer sounded.
"This is a great, great day, and I thought that this day signifies just anything is possible," said OSU head coach Scott Rueck, whose team has won 22 of its last 23 games. "This is a group that believed when there was no reason to. To see them get through to a Final Four, it's mind-blowing."
Both teams struggled out of the gates, combining to hit just 9-of-31 shots in the first quarter.
Oregon State opened the game with back-to-back turnovers and missed its first five shots before Wiese drained a 3-pointer 3 ½ minutes into the game.
After Baylor got out to a 4-0 lead in the first 2 ½ minutes, the Beavers hit three straight treys to go up 9-4 and led 16-11 at the end of the quarter.
Mulkey spiced things up halfway through the second period, tossing her jacket after a no-call at the other end, when Davis appeared to be fouled on a drive to the basket. Referee Kyle Bacon hit the irate Baylor coach with a technical, leading to a free throw and bucket that put OSU up 26-18.
"The technical, you bet I meant to get it," Mulkey said.
The Lady Bears reeled off seven straight points to pull back within one, but the Beavers closed the half on an 8-0 run and took a 34-25 lead into the break when Jamie Weisner drained a 3-pointer off an inbounds play in the closing seconds.
"I thought our inexperience showed up a little bit," Mulkey said. "They don't have freshmen in their lineup, they're juniors and really seniors. And I thought that some inexperience showed up early in the game. Not that we weren't playing hard, but just communication some on the defensive end."
Switching to a press in the second half, hoping to push the pace a little bit, the Lady Bears got back within one again. Junior forward Khadijah Cave scored six points in a 48-second span, getting the last bucket on a layup when she stole the inbounds pass.
OSU was still nursing that one-point lead going into the fourth, and Baylor tied it up three times in the last 5 ½ minutes on back-to-back buckets by freshman post Kalani Brown and a jumper in the lane by Jones. But each time, the Beavers answered.
"We didn't make it to our ultimate goal, which was to make it to the Final Four," Davis said. "But it's been a great year. I've watched how the freshmen have grown up before my eyes, and I've watched how the seniors blossomed and took over this team. Alexis Jones was hurt at the beginning of the year and we weren't sure if she was ever going to get back to Alexis Jones. And I watched her grow and watched her come alive in the NCAA Tournament. So, it's definitely not a lost year."
Davis and Jones were named to the Dallas Regional all-tournament team along with DePaul's Jessica January and OSU's backcourt tandem of Wiese and Weisner, who earned Most Outstanding Player honors after scoring 54 points in the two games.
