Box Score By Jerry Hill
Baylor Bear Foundation
OKLAHOMA CITY, Okla. - Three was the key for the fourth-ranked Baylor Lady Bears in Saturday's quarterfinal game at the Big 12 Championship.
In beating Texas Tech (13-18) for the third time this season, 82-51, the Lady Bears (31-1) held the Red Raider reserves to three points, gave up zero 3-pointers until the fourth quarter and dominated the third period, 29-10.
Baylor's bench almost outscored Tech by itself, putting up 45 points and getting double-digit efforts from freshman post Kalani Brown (17) and sophomore guard Kristy Wallace (15) as coach Kim Mulkey rested her starters in the fourth quarter.
"We have such depth and such versatile players, Coach Mulkey can keep throwing them out there, which is good," said Wallace, who was 7-for-11 from the field and added three assists. "It's fun to have everyone out there and rotating everyone through."
Especially in the post area, the Red Raiders couldn't handle Baylor's constant wave of fresh players. The Lady Bears dominated the boards, 45-34, outscored Tech in the paint, 44-20, and got 22 points off their 14 offensive rebounds.
"They keep coming," Tech coach Candi Whitaker said. "When you can keep your `4' and `5' fresh, and you have the luxury of continuing to bring in 6-6 and bring in great size and bigger, there is no one else in the country that can do that. There are some teams with size, but not the kind of depth they have with the type of size."
In a back-and-forth first quarter, the lead actually changed hands six times before the Lady Bears closed on a 7-0 run that was capped by Alexis Jones' buzzer-beating trey that made it 20-14.
Wallace then heated up in the second quarter, scoring seven straight points in a two-minute stretch that had the Lady Bears up by double digits at the break, 38-26.
"I'm just doing what I can do to help my team," said Wallace, who scored 23 points in Monday's 74-48 win over eighth-ranked Texas that clinched the outright regular-season title, "whether that be scoring or hard defense or whether that be on the bench cheering on the team, I want to do whatever I can to help them out."
Any hopes Tech had of a second-half comeback were put to rest in the first five minutes of the third quarter, when the Lady Bears went on an 11-2 run, pushing the lead to 49-28 on a pair of Khadijah Cave free throws.
By that point, Mulkey had already started emptying her bench, giving senior point guard Niya Johnson and junior forward Nina Davis the rest of the night off. Davis played just 16 minutes, getting six points and six rebounds, while Johnson had four points, five assists and two steals in 24 minutes and passed LSU's Temeka Johnson (945) for sixth on the NCAA's career assists list with 947.
Tech missed its first 14 shots from outside the arc, including nine in a row in a dismal third quarter, before Zuri Sanders finally opened the fourth quarter with a 3-pointer.
"No question, Baylor guards you," Whitaker said. "But if you go back and look at the 3's we got, I thought for the most part they were pretty good looks and open. They just didn't go. Did they not go because you're more uptight because you're playing Baylor? Possibly. Obviously, you're not going to get much inside around the rim, but for the most part I thought our looks from 3 were pretty good. We just didn't make them."
Alexis Prince, the only starter still on the floor in the fourth quarter, scored five of her 10 points in the first three minutes and then took a seat at the 5:56 mark. Brown hit a pair of free throws that pushed it to a 39-point lead, 78-39, before the Red Raiders closed on a 12-4 run in the last five minutes when Baylor had four freshman and senior reserve Chardonae Fuqua in the game.
"I think it's always good to be able to rest and be able to find different matchups and different rotations with different players," said Cave, who had nine points and five rebounds in 13 minutes off the bench. "Being able to rest and everybody play and have fun, I think that was good."
Baylor advances to Sunday's 1:30 p.m. semifinal to face 24th-ranked and fifth-seeded Oklahoma (21-9), which avenged a pair of regular-season losses to beat Oklahoma State, 61-43.
Two of the Lady Bears' closest games in an 18-game winning streak came against the Sooners, beating them 78-67 in Waco and then escaping Norman with a 78-70 victory when OU rallied from a 19-point deficit to pull within two in the fourth quarter.
"I know all of us have tremendous confidence," said Oklahoma junior guard Derica Wyatt, who hit all five of her shots and scored 13 points in Saturday's win over the Cowgirls. "My thing is we haven't played to our potential both times we've played (Baylor), so we know we can play 10 times better than we played them the first time and even the second time. Last time we played them, we had that surge in the third quarter and I think that's momentum for us, honestly, and we're ready to play them."
Second-seeded and sixth-ranked Texas (27-3) faces third-seeded and No. 22 West Virginia (24-8) in Sunday's other semifinal at 4 p.m., with the final scheduled for 8 p.m. Monday. In Saturday's other games, the Longhorns knocked out a Cinderella Kansas team, 66-50, and the Mountaineers held off Kansas State, 74-65.
