By Jerry Hill
Baylor Bear Insider
           
Baylor proved that five is always better than one.
           
Bridget Carleton did everything she could to keep Iowa State in the game, scoring a game-high 28 points, but the second-ranked Lady Bears had all five starters score in double figures and pulled away in the second half for an 84-69 victory over the No. 20 Cyclones Wednesday night for their 31^st win in a row at the Ferrell Center.
           
Lauren Cox reached the 1,000-point plateau for her career and flirted with a triple-double, finishing with 22 points, nine rebounds and seven assists. LSU transfer Chloe Jackson recorded her third career double-double and first at Baylor with 11 points and a career-high 11 assists, while Kalani Brown (18), Juicy Landrum (16) and DiDi Richards (15) also scored in double digits for the Lady Bears (16-1, 6-0).
           
"If you didn't watch the game, and you looked at the stat sheet and saw what Cox and Kalani and those bigs did, you wouldn't think that they were packed in the paint," Baylor coach Kim Mulkey said. "They made it tough to get a look in there. I just told them, give them a second look, just keep making them run the floor, throw it in there. And we did and hit some big shots."
           
After exploding for 24 of Iowa State's 35 first-half points, hitting 9-of-12 from the floor and 2-of-3 from outside the arc, Carleton added just four points in the second half and missed four of her five shots.
           
"They did a good job switching people up on her," said Iowa State coach Bill Fennelly, whose team fell to 14-5 overall and 4-3 in the Big 12. "They didn't let her get inside and helped a lot more."
           
Other than trying to harass her a little more, Mulkey said she didn't really do anything to change up the defense on the 6-foot-1 senior guard.
           
"I just went in and said, 'Guys, she's got 24 of their 35 points,''' Mulkey said. "We had to do a better job man-to-man and really bodying up and realizing that I'm not going to have help tonight. And I just thought we withstood it. And in the third quarter, we opened it up a little bit."
           
Iowa State trailed by just two after the first quarter and pulled to within 36-35 late in the half on a Carleton 3-pointer. But, Jackson assisted Richards on a layup and then found Cox in the corner for an open trey that made it 41-35 at the break.
           
"Just to score the last basket before the half, I think whoever gets that has that confidence going into the second half," said Cox, who was 8-of-12 from the floor and 2-of-3 from 3-point range after hitting just one trey in the previous six games. "I've been working on my outside shot, so just to see it fall was good for me."
           
Fennelly said Cox's 3-pointer right before intermission was a big momentum-changer.
           
"They run what we call a butt screen," he said. "At the shot clock, they ran it four times, I think. We practiced it and practiced it. And to their credit, we guarded it completely opposite of how we practiced. They hit three 3's, and then we guarded the last one right, but came off Kalani. Why do you come off her? But, that's 11 points. That's execution on their part and lack of execution on our part. Those are momentum plays. I'm disappointed, because we knew exactly what we wanted to do."
           
Baylor's post players combined for 13 points in the third quarter, when the Lady Bears outscored the Cyclones, 25-12, in stretching the lead out to 66-47. Landrum, who had a solid all-around game with 16 points, eight rebounds, six assists and five steals, hit two 3-pointers in the last 2 ½ minutes of the quarter.
           
"At the end of the day, every coach says the same thing, you can't do anything with their size over time," Fennelly said. "You just can't, unless you're making a lot of shots."
           
Jackson said she didn't even know she had posted a double-double in the game.
           
"My teammates were hitting shots," said Jackson, who had 10 assists in her last game. "I knew I was hitting them early, then I missed a couple, so I knew I just had to start feeding my teammates. And they held me up, honestly. They were hitting tonight."
           
The Lady Bears (16-1, 6-0) go back on the road to face Oklahoma at 2 p.m. Sunday in Norman and Oklahoma State at 7 p.m. Wednesday in Stillwater.