Brown, WBB Roll Past Morehead State

Wednesday, December 12

Waco, Texas

Noon

Baylor

8-0 #3/4

Morehead State

7-3

Team	1	2	3	4	F
Morehead State	16	13	17	12	58
Baylor	32	16	27	21	96

Brown, WBB Roll Past Morehead State

12/12/2018 2:44:00 PM | Women's Basketball

Box Score PDF Box Postgame Notes Postgame Quotes Highlights

Senior center scored 21 points to lead the Lady Bears.

By Jerry Hill
Baylor Bear Insider

Even when the Morehead State Eagles knew what was coming, they couldn't come close to stopping it.

Baylor's post combo of Kalani Brown and Lauren Cox combined to hit 14-of-19 shots from the field and scored 33 points as the No. 3/4 Lady Bears (8-0) rolled to a 96-58 win on Wednesday before an "I'm Going to College Day" crowd of 9,627 at the Ferrell Center.

"We knew they like to run the pick-and-roll against the zone and throw it up to Brown," said Morehead State coach Greg Todd, whose team fell to 7-3 with its second loss to a top-25 team this season. "That's just hard to take away. You can squeeze two people in there. But, when it's going up, it's very tough against a post who's about 6-1. It's just a tough matchup in there."

The Lady Bears used a distinct size advantage to dominating the rebounding battle, 58-23, and outscored the smaller Eagles in the paint, 60-10.

Even when she had defenders draped all over her, the 6-foot-7 Brown found a way to finish, missing just two of her 11 shots from the field and finishing with 21 points and five boards.

"I've been missing layups lately in practice, so me and (assistant coach) Daphne (Mitchell) were doing drills, and I was glad to see it was paying off," Brown said. "Just working on plays and getting muscle memory back. I was kind of out of sync."

Baylor jumped out to a 32-16 lead in the first quarter, hitting 13 of 24 shots from the field with a phenomenal 11-1 assists-to-turnover ratio.

"I complimented them at the end of the first quarter on things that are important that will help you win championships, and that was our assist-to-turnover ratio," Baylor coach Kim Mulkey said. "I started subbing, and then we had eight turnovers in a row, so I just played rotating chairs. If you turn it over, you're coming out. I think it's a great teaching moment. They may not like it, but if I don't get their attention we'll continue to have those turnovers in big games."

After turning it over nine times in a sloppy second quarter, the Lady Bears had just seven total in the second half and outscored Morehead State, 48-29.

The Eagles came in as the No. 3 scoring offense in the country, averaging 89.3 points per game, and ranked among the top 10 nationally with a 49.5 shooting percentage. Against Baylor, they scored 31 points below their season average and shot 31.3 percent from the floor (20-of-64).

"A lot of that has to do with our commitment to field goal percentage defense," Mulkey said. "We want to always keep them at 39 percent or less. If you do that, they're going to have trouble scoring a lot of points."

The Morehead State coach attributed part of the Eagles' offensive struggles to Baylor's size.

"We like to attack the basket a lot," Todd said. "Attacking the basket, you're letting their big players sit in there. We had to shoot more 3's, but we shot the 3-ball pretty well overall (12-of-30). And we took pretty good care of the ball. We just couldn't play the pace we wanted to play. They're just too long. We like to get up shots a little quicker, but we knew that would hurt us overall."

Miranda Cozart and Crystal Simmons-Cozar led Morehead State with 14 points apiece, while Baylor had five players score in double figures. Besides Brown and Cox (12), Juicy Landrum knocked down four 3-pointers and chipped in with 14, with freshmen NaLyssa Smith and Queen Egbo scoring 10 apiece.

Mulkey gave a shout-out to the teachers for bringing the estimated 6,000 elementary and middle school children that came to the Wednesday afternoon game.

"For those guys to bring as many children as they brought to this arena today, knowing they had to feed them, keep them all in a group together, that was impressive," she said. "I want every one of them to know how much the Lady Bears appreciate what they do. It doesn't happen without teachers."

Baylor, coming off a nine-day break for semester final exams, will face 11^th-ranked Stanford (6-1) at 2 p.m. CDT Saturday in Palto Alto, Calif., before another 15-day break for the Christmas holidays.