No. 7/6 WBB Tops UTRGV, 98-37

Monday, December 31

Waco, Texas

Noon

Baylor

9-1 #7/6

UTRGV

6-7

UTRGV

Baylor

No. 7/6 WBB Tops UTRGV, 98-37

12/31/2018 2:07:00 PM | Women's Basketball

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Lady Bears tie school record for third time this season with seven in double figures

By Jerry Hill
Baylor Bear Insider

Coming off a 15-day break and playing a UTRGV team that had already tested back-to-back top-25 teams, a New Year's Eve matchup at the Ferrell Center looked like a trap game for the No 8/7 Baylor Lady Bears.

Especially if Baylor was caught looking ahead to its Thursday showdown against No. 1 Connecticut (11-0).

If this was a trap, it failed miserably.

Showing no signs of rust or being unfocused, the Lady Bears sprinted out to a 25-point lead in the first quarter and blew out the visiting Vaqueros, 98-37, Monday afternoon before a Ferrell Center crowd of 5,049.

"If somebody beats us before a UConn or something, you just need to pat them on the back and say great game, because we will always be prepared," said coach Kim Mulkey, whose team improved to 9-1 after dropping its last game at Stanford back on Dec. 15. "You can't help but talk about UConn. They're the No. 1 team in the country, they've won all the championships. Now, we can talk about UConn."

It was evident that UConn was not on the Lady Bears' minds as they raced out to a 31-6 lead in the first quarter and were never challenged, holding UTRGV (6-7) to just 16.9 percent shooting overall and only two buckets inside the 3-point arc.

The Vaqueros were playing their third straight top-25 team, all in the last 12 days, after falling at home to No. 12 Texas (81-66) and on the road at No. 23 Texas A&M (84-61) just two days ago.

"This was the best of the three, and we knew that coming in," said first-year UTRGV head coach Lane Lord, a Waco native who played prep ball at Waco Christian. "We competed very well the first two, and we played hard tonight. The size is just so much different. They were awesome on the offensive glass."

Baylor dominated the boards, 75-26 (tying a single-game record for team rebounds), and scored 25 second-chance points on 31 offensive rebounds. Freshman Queen Egbo recorded her first double-double with 15 points and 13 rebounds in just 14 minutes, Lauren Cox had 17 points, nine boards and three blocks, and DiDi Richards had nine rebounds and a career-high nine assists.

"When you have teammates that can hit jumpers, it makes it easier to get all those assists," Richards said. "And hearing Mulkey saying, 'Go get it, DiDi,' makes me go in there (for rebounds)."

Mulkey said Richards' six offensive rebounds and getting her team more chances "was as important as her nine assists today."

Rebounding was priority No. 1 coming off the 68-63 loss to Stanford.

"That's just a mindset, that's an aggressiveness that you don't sit there and expect every shot to go in," Mulkey said. "You go in there thinking it's not going in and I'm going to get the next shot. And it showed up in the stat sheet today."

Coming off the extended break for Christmas, the other areas Mulkey emphasized were "making passes at the right time when people are open" and "just having a little energy about you, a little toughness about you, will to win."

"And just play extremely hard," Mulkey said. "We play hard, but sometimes you've got to play a little harder. And especially on the road when people are making shots they don't normally make."

With UTRGV's defense packed in to try to contain the 6-4 Cox and 6-7 All-American Kalani Brown, the post duo came out firing from the outside as the Lady Bears hit six of their first eight shots and 12-of-19 in the first quarter.

Cox, who was 3-of-10 from outside the arc coming into the game, knocked down two of her three attempts from long range.

"I don't know what their scouting report really was. They wanted to send three, even four players, whenever we caught it in the post," she said. "They were leaving us wide open, and we were knocking down the shots. It gives me a confidence boost, for sure, just because I've been working on that and trying to get more consistent."

Lord said the Lady Bears' inside-out game is "what's going to take them to the Final Four."

"That's how good they are," he said. "They've been good, but this year they're special. I've been a Baylor fan my whole life. I'm a big Kim fan and, of course, I follow them. Now that we're at this level, it was fun to play her. But, it was a total domination."

Baylor tied a program record with seven players in double figures. Brown had 13 points and six rebounds, with NaLyssa Smith scoring 12 points and Juicy Landrum, Chloe Jackson and Caitlin Bickle adding 10 points apiece.

Jackson matched Richards for the team lead with a career-high nine assists and also had five steals. Baylor's defense had 17 steals and 11 blocks, forced 22 turnovers and held the Vaqueros to just 2-of-21 shooting inside the 3-point arc.

"We just got back from Christmas, but I wanted them to just play to where they couldn't breathe anymore," Mulkey said. "DiDi and Moon (Ursin), their pressure on the ball-handler is so important for us. I think Chloe does a better job when she can guard on the wing, because she anticipates things, she gets at angles better. DiDi and Moon just harass the ball-handler better. We worked a lot on that today. I thought our activity was better. We've got to do that."

The Lady Bears host UConn at 8 p.m. Thursday in a game that will be televised by ESPN before opening up league play with a matchup at Texas Tech (9-2) on Sunday.