Lady Bears Advance to National Title Game

Friday, April 5

Tampa, Fla.

6:00 PM CT

Baylor

36-1

Oregon

33-5

Oregon

Baylor

Lady Bears Advance to National Title Game

4/5/2019 8:33:00 PM | Women's Basketball

Box Score PDF Box Postgame Notes

Kalani Brown and Lauren Cox combined for 43 points.

By Jerry Hill
Baylor Bear Insider
            TAMPA, Fla. –Since the top-ranked Baylor Lady Bears faced halftime deficits just twice before and had been in just six games decided by single digits all year, there were doubts how they would handle it if they found themselves in a down-to-the-wire game.
            Not Kim Mulkey.
            "I think y'all wondered. I didn't," Baylor's 19^th-year head coach said. "Our practices prepare us for this moment."
            Pushed for the first time in this NCAA Tournament, the Lady Bears (36-1) turned up the defensive pressure down the stretch and pulled out a 72-67 win in Friday's national semifinal at Amalie Arena to reach the championship game for the third time in program history.
            "The feeling is unreal," said 6-7 senior All-American Kalani Brown, who was 9-of-12 from the floor and finished with 22 points and seven rebounds. "I'm still in shock. I'm overwhelmed. I'm just happy to be a part of this team right now."
            Baylor won its 28^thconsecutive game, advancing to Sunday's 5 p.m. CDT championship game against defending champion Notre Dame (35-3). In the late semifinal, the Fighting Irish overcame a nine-point fourth-quarter deficit to defeat UConn, 81-76.
            "They played like champions today and deserve to move on. That's a great basketball team," said Oregon coach Kelly Graves, whose team finished 33-5 with its first trip to the Final Four. "We had our chances down the stretch. I just don't know if ever really got kind of our game going. We saw bits and pieces of it here and there."
            In a back-and-forth game that featured 12 ties and 12 lead changes, Oregon reeled off seven straight points and went up 64-61 with 6:12 left when senior guard Maite Cazorla got loose for a 3-pointer from the top of the key.
            That's when Baylor's trademark, shutdown defense took over. Oregon missed all but one of its last 13 shots from the floor and was outscored, 11-3, over the last six minutes.
            "We might have just worn them out," said 6-4 junior forward Lauren Cox, who recorded her ninth double-double of the season with 21 points, 11 rebounds, seven assists and three blocks. "We like to run. When you've got to run back on defense, stop us in transition, your legs get tired, shots that usually fall might not fall."
            After DiDi Richards picked up her fourth foul early in the fourth quarter, Mulkey put junior guard Juicy Landrum on Sabrina Ionescu. The Wade Trophy winner was scoreless in the last 10 minutes, missing all seven shots and finishing with a team-high 18 points on 6-for-24 shooting.
            "I was riding Juicy pretty hard. She had some terrible turnovers, trying to thread the needle on things. I just needed to keep challenging her," Mulkey said of Landrum, who had just six points on 3-of-8 shooting but finished with nine rebounds. "What we did is we left Juicy on Sabrina and let DiDi get somebody else. . . I didn't want DiDi to guard her with four fouls that early in the fourth quarter."
            Following a time out, Cox scored on a pair of driving layups sandwiched around a bank-shot jumper in the lane by Brown, going up 67-64 with exactly two minutes left.
            Satou Sabally, who had 16 points, drained a second-chance 3-pointer after an offensive board off a miss by Ionescu that tied it at 67-67.
            With the game on the line, senior point guard Chloe Jackson went around a screen up top by Cox and drove in for a scoop layup that gave Baylor the lead for good with just 41 ticks left as neither Cazorla nor Erin Boley took her.
            Mulkey said it was the "5 game," a play the Lady Bears had not run the whole game.
            "If they switch, Chloe take her," Mulkey said. "And if they help, then kick it back to Cox at the top. They kind of got confused, and she just went in there and got a layup."
            Cox all but iced it with a pair of free throws with 18.7 seconds left, then Brown made one of two for the final margin as the Ducks missed their last five shots and didn't score in the last minute and a half.
            Although Oregon tied a national semifinal record with 12 3-pointers, outscoring the Lady Bears, 36-0, from outside the arc, Graves said 32 attempts from 3-point range "is too many for us. We're more comfortable in the 25 to 28 range. I just thought we shot a few too many, a couple not so good ones. But, that's what they were giving us tonight. If we have a normal shooting night, those threes for twos are more successful."
            The contrasting styles on full display, Brown and Cox helped Baylor dominate points in the paint, 48-20, and finish with a 38-33 edge on the boards. Richards chipped in with 15 points for the Lady Bears, while Boley hit four 3-pointers and scored 14 for the Ducks.
            "They don't have 6-7 and 6-5 in the paint," Mulkey said. "I cannot imagine if they did that they would be shooting that many threes."
            Jackson was scoreless in the first half and missed her first five shots before knocking down a pull-up jumper midway through the third quarter. She hit 3-of-11 for the game and finished with six points, seven rebounds, six assists and five of the team's 13 turnovers.
            "My coaches and teammates just kept telling me to shoot it, it's going to fall eventually," Jackson said. "My teammates just did a great job scoring, picking me up basically. It was just my coaches, my teammates, telling me to shoot it, don't lose confidence."
            In its two previous championship game appearances, Baylor defeated Michigan State in 2005 and Notre Dame in 2012.