Brown, No. 1/1 WBB Power Past TCU

Saturday, February 9

Waco, Texas

Noon

Baylor

21-1, 11-0 #1/1

TCU

17-6, 7-5

TCU

Baylor

Brown, No. 1/1 WBB Power Past TCU

2/9/2019 2:18:00 PM | Women's Basketball

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Kalani Brown recorded a season-high 32 points.

By Jerry Hill
Baylor Bear Insider

Standing 6-foot-7, Kalani Brown is tough enough to defend all by herself. With 6-4 junior forward Lauren Cox by her side, it's almost unfair.

Brown missed just one shot all day and scored a season-high 32 points, three off her career high, to lift the top-ranked Baylor Lady Bears (21-1, 11-0) over TCU, 89-71, Saturday afternoon for the 34^th straight win in conference play and 33^rd in a row at home.

"What makes Kalani Brown so good is Lauren Cox," said TCU coach Regan Pebley, whose team fell to 17-6 overall and 6-3 in the Big 12. The way Cox passes and stretches the defense with her outside shooting, "makes it difficult to pull a double. (Brown) gets the ball in a spot that all she has to do is finish it."

After missing a jumper from around the free-throw line, Brown hit her last 10 shots and went a perfect 10-of-10 from the line.

"I was like, 'All right, I'm not feeling it today,''' Brown said of her second shot of the day. "I just put it in my back pocket."

TCU wishes Brown wasn't feeling it. The Lady Bears shot 64.8 percent as a team, its second-best mark in Big 12 play, and doubled up the Horned Frogs on points in the paint, 56-28.

While she shot 11-of-12 from the floor, and added nine rebounds, three assists, three blocks and two steals, Brown's favorite line on the stat sheet was 10-of-10 from the line.

"I've been trying to get my free throw percentage up," said Brown, a 73.2 percent free-throw shooter for her career who is now 66-of-83 (79.5 percent) this season. "Coach let me shoot the technical fouls, so I was excited. I'm proud of how I'm shooting right now. Hopefully, I can continue that."

Amy Okonkwo kept the Frogs in it early, hitting four 3-pointers in the first quarter and scoring TCU's first 11 points. She drained her fourth trey to tie it up at 18-18 with 1:05 left in the quarter, but Brown hit a go-ahead layup and then converted a three-point play with a layup and follow free throw for a 23-18 lead after the first frame.

At the end of the half, Cox drained what looked like a 3-pointer at the top of the key, but it was ruled a two-pointer that gave Baylor a 38-31 lead at the break.

Brown had another five-point scoring spree to start the second half, part of an 8-2 run that stretched the lead out to double digits.

"I was just trying to get the momentum back on our side," Brown said. "When I get an and-one, it sparks a lot of energy. So, we didn't want to get in a slump, especially in the second half, or allow them to shoot a lot of 3's. Just trying to change the momentum back on our side."

TCU came in as the hottest team outside of Baylor in the Big 12 and one of the hottest in the country, winning five in a row and six of its last seven.

But, Baylor's post duo of Brown and Cox was just too much for the Frogs to handle. Cox was 8-of-14 from the floor and finished with 18 points, eight rebounds and five assists, feeding Brown for multiple buckets and hitting DiDi Richards on a back-door cut.

"I take a lot of pride in (my assists)," Cox said. "I think a lot of it is I can see over the defense and see the cutters and elevate if I have to and make that pass. Coach always says you want to have a 2-to-1 assist-to-turnover ratio, so that's my goal every game."

Okonkwo led the Frogs with 28 points, hitting 9-of-13 from the floor, 4-of-7 from 3-point range and 6-of-6 at the line. Jayde Woods added 10 for TCU, while senior post Jordan Moore scored 10 points below her season average with just six points on 2-of-6 shooting.

"Obviously, they didn't throw the ball to Moore much today, because it looked like their plan was to shoot as many 3's as they could. Which, we're pretty used to that. Just got to grind it out."

Two other Baylor players notched double-digit points, with Landrum scoring 11 points and Richards adding 10 points and a game-high seven assists with only one turnover.

Baylor goes on the road to face Kansas State (14-9, 5-6) at 7 p.m. Wednesday in Manhattan before returning home for back-to-back games against Oklahoma and Kansas.