Box Score By Jerry Hill
Baylor Bear Foundation
à ¢Ã¢' ¬Ã¢ ‚¬ ¹OKLAHOMA CITY, Okla. - Most players, most coaches, most teams would die for a chance to make four straight Elite Eights.
à ¢Ã¢' ¬Ã¢ ‚¬ ¹Baylor's not most programs. Kim Mulkey's not most coaches. And Nina Davis is certainly not most players.
à ¢Ã¢' ¬Ã¢ ‚¬ ¹Denied a Final Four berth for a fourth consecutive time, the top-seeded Baylor Lady Bears dropped a heartbreaking 94-85 overtime game to the second-seeded Mississippi State Bulldogs Sunday night in the Oklahoma City region final at Chesapeake Energy Arena.
à ¢Ã¢' ¬Ã¢ ‚¬ ¹"I just went in the locker room and apologized to the four seniors that I couldn't get them to a Final Four," Mulkey said. "I thanked them for four wonderful years of Elite Eight basketball. Many players and schools across the country would trade places with them in a heartbeat.
à ¢Ã¢' ¬Ã¢ ‚¬ ¹"But, at Baylor, we have expectations that are higher than an Elite Eight, whether that's egotistical, fair, it is what it is. We have to keep feeding that monster we started 17 years ago."
à ¢Ã¢' ¬Ã¢ ‚¬ ¹Baylor (33-4), which won its first three NCAA Tournament games by an average margin of 54.3 points, simply had no answer all night for 5-5 junior guard Morgan William, who hit six 3-pointers and poured in a career-high 41 points.
à ¢Ã¢' ¬Ã¢ ‚¬ ¹"Our point guard was as good as they get today," said MSU head coach Vic Shaefer, who was part of Texas A&M's national championship staff in 2011 when the Aggies upset Baylor in the same round. "She put us on her back. She was obviously feeling it. We ran a couple different things for her. We just had to keep going back, because they were having a hard time dealing with it. She wanted the ball."
à ¢Ã¢' ¬Ã¢ ‚¬ ¹Coming into the game with a 10.1-point average after scoring just five points in a 75-64 region semifinal win over Washington, William hit 13-of-22 overall, 6-of-8 from 3-point range and 9-of-10 from the line in one of the best performances ever against the Lady Bears.
à ¢Ã¢' ¬Ã¢ ‚¬ ¹"You're not going to win a game when somebody scores 41 points," said Davis, who had 18 points, three rebounds and two assists in her last game.
à ¢Ã¢' ¬Ã¢ ‚¬ ¹Sophomore post Kalani Brown led the Lady Bears with 27 points, nine rebounds and five blocks, but got only 13 shots for the game and one in overtime.
à ¢Ã¢' ¬Ã¢ ‚¬ ¹"The problem was we couldn't get them the ball enough," Mulkey said. "That goes back to ball pressure, being able to run the show out there. Seventeen turnovers to four, you shouldn't even be in the ballgame, not at the Elite Eight level. We hung around, hung in there . . . but when you've got that much down in the block, you better find them every time."
à ¢Ã¢' ¬Ã¢ ‚¬ ¹In a back-and-forth game that featured 12 ties and a mind-boggling 24 lead changes, with neither team trailing by more than seven during regulation, the Lady Bears actually jumped out to a 9-2 lead in the first three minutes.
à ¢Ã¢' ¬Ã¢ ‚¬ ¹But, as they did all night, the Lady Bulldogs answered with a 12-2 run of their own and went up 14-11 on a banked 3-pointer by Victoria Vivians. By far the team's best scoring threat all year, Vivians finished with 24 points on 9-of-23 shooting and added six rebounds, six assists and two steals.
à ¢Ã¢' ¬Ã¢ ‚¬ ¹MSU's good fortune continued when William banked in a buzzer-beating trey at the end of the opening period to put the Lady Bulldogs ahead, 21-19.
à ¢Ã¢' ¬Ã¢ ‚¬ ¹"I knew we were in trouble when they were hitting bank-shot threes to start the game when the shot clock was winding down," said Mulkey, who is now 3-5 in Elite Eight games. "What do you do?
à ¢Ã¢' ¬Ã¢ ‚¬ ¹Scoring 14 points off Baylor's nine first-half turnovers, MSU went into the break with a 43-40 lead, scoring the last four points on layups by Breanna Richardson and Teaira McCowan. William was a relatively quiet 3-of-6 for 10 points in the first half, while Vivians had 15 and McCowan eight for the Lady Bulldogs.
à ¢Ã¢' ¬Ã¢ ‚¬ ¹Baylor fell behind by as many as six in the third quarter, 52-46, when Blair Schaefer drained a 3-pointer. But, the Lady Bears closed the third quarter with a 9-2 run by hitting their last five shots and going up 61-60 on a Davis jumper.
à ¢Ã¢' ¬Ã¢ ‚¬ ¹Heating up, William scored nine in the third and 10 in the fourth, giving MSU a 73-68 lead when she drained another 3-pointer with 3:23 left.
à ¢Ã¢' ¬Ã¢ ‚¬ ¹"She wasn't supposed to be able to shoot like that," senior guard Alexis Jones said of William. "But, it was difficult to get (through all the) screens. If you followed her, she was probably going to take you off the dribble. If you try to go over the top, they were moving and bringing up the screen a little higher. So, when she caught the ball, she was just pulling it. It was just her night for those things to go in."
à ¢Ã¢' ¬Ã¢ ‚¬ ¹Answering right back, Baylor scored seven unanswered points with a pair of Brown layups sandwiched between three free throws by Alexis Jones off a three-shot foul by William.
à ¢Ã¢' ¬Ã¢ ‚¬ ¹Jones had a chance to all but ice the game after one of just four turnovers by the Lady Bulldogs, but she missed the mark on a 3-pointer from the top of the key.
à ¢Ã¢' ¬Ã¢ ‚¬ ¹William drove inside and hit a game-tying floater with 22.6 seconds showing on the clock. Jones drove the baseline for the potential game-winner but missed a bank shot.à ¢Ã¢' ¬Ã¢ ‚¬ ¹
Getting one last shot at it after a tie ball with 3.4 seconds left, the Lady Bears turned it over on the inbounds play to send it into overtime.
à ¢Ã¢' ¬Ã¢ ‚¬ ¹"We had a shot to win the game," Mulkey said. "Jones, I thought, got a good look there at the end of regulation. They blocked it, or two or three of them collapsed on her there. I'll say it again, as good as they played and as poorly as we played in handling the basketball, we still had an opportunity to win it, and we didn't."
à ¢Ã¢' ¬Ã¢ ‚¬ ¹Baylor seemed to get the early edge in the OT period when Alexis Prince knocked down a 3-pointer to give the Lady Bears a 78-77 lead. But, that lead lasted all of 17 seconds, with Vivians coming off a screen to nail a 3-pointer that put the Lady Bulldogs back ahead, 80-78.
à ¢Ã¢' ¬Ã¢ ‚¬ ¹"I thought we had it," Davis said. "We just needed one stop . . . one stop. Every time we'd get the lead, they'd come down and shoot a 3 or we would foul. We just could never get the one stop we needed."
à ¢Ã¢' ¬Ã¢ ‚¬ ¹Junior point guard Kristy Wallace, who had seven of Baylor's 17 turnovers, knocked down a pair of free throws to tie it again at 80-80 with 3:40 remaining.
à ¢Ã¢' ¬Ã¢ ‚¬ ¹After MSU stretched it out to a five-point lead, Prince got the Lady Bears back in it by burying another trey to make it 87-85 with 1:25 left. But, William put the game away by making seven of eight from the line as Baylor missed its last three shots and turned it over once.
à ¢Ã¢' ¬Ã¢ ‚¬ ¹The loss was a tough ending for a senior class - Davis, Prince, Jones and Khadijah Cave - that made it to four straight Elite Eights and won a combined nine Big 12 regular-season or tournament titles.
à ¢Ã¢' ¬Ã¢ ‚¬ ¹"I think their record speaks for itself," Mulkey said. "Their legacy is what it is. They've kept us at an elite level. I just hate for them, because they really are Final Four type of kids. This was a Final Four type of team. We just didn't get it done today."
