Ursin's Career Day Helps No. 2/1 WBB Win over No. 17/18 WVU

Saturday, January 18

Waco, Texas

7:00 PM

Baylor

West Virginia

Ursin's Career Day Helps No. 2/1 WBB Win over No. 17/18 WVU

1/18/2020 9:25:00 PM | Women's Basketball

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Lady Bears win their Big 12 & school 45th-straight Big 12 regular season game

By Jerry Hill
Baylor Bear Insider
            Fifteen years ago, when Kim Mulkey won the first of three national championships, the Baylor coach told her fans to "not take it for granted."
            The message was the same after the No. 2/1 Lady Bears (15-1, 4-0) routed 17^th-ranked West Virginia, 91-51, Saturday night in setting school and Big 12 records with their 45^th-consecutive Big 12 regular-season game.
            "It's hard to do," said Mulkey, whose team also won its national-best 49^th-straight home game. "You've heard me say it a million times, I think people become spoiled. Fans become spoiled, I think they expect it. We don't expect it. We approach it like this is the next big game, and we've got to win it. We don't think things will be handed to us. We actually think it will be a lot tougher because of the success of the previous teams. I don't care how it looks, it's not easy."
            They certainly made Saturday's game look easy.
            Junior guard Moon Ursin scored 15 of her career-high 22 points in the second half, helping the Baylor bench outscore the starters, 46-45. Four other players scored in double figures, including Juicy Landrum with 14 points and NaLyssa Smith recording her seventh double-double of the season with 10 points and 10 boards.
            "I think my teammates were finding me a lot tonight," said Ursin, who was 8-of-12 from the floor with two 3-pointers. "They always talk about it, Coach especially, just shoot the ball. So, I've been trying to do that, just to be another player out on the perimeter. Tonight, I saw the first two go down, then the third, and I just got in a rhythm after a while."
            Mulkey, who's dipped into her bench early and often the last two games, said the Lady Bear reserves are "growing in their confidence and I am growing confidence in them because of how they're playing on the floor.
            "It's not just on the offensive end, it starts on the defensive end," she said. "And they're doing it against starters for the opposing team. That's when you know your team is pretty darn good is because they're doing it against starters."
            Grad transfer point guard Te'a Cooper scored seven of her 11 points in the first quarter, helping Baylor go up double digits in the first five minutes and take a 22-8 lead. Limiting West Virginia (13-3, 3-2) to just 17 first-half points and 17.9 percent shooting (5-of-28), the Lady Bears took a commanding 42-17 lead at the break.
            West Virginia coach Mike Carey, who came to eh media room 45 minutes after the game ended, said the Mountaineers "have no discipline right now."
            "Bad shots, don't reverse the ball, don't move it. We've got people who are too much going one-on-one," Carey said. "Bad shots lead to layups on the other end. . . . I don't blame them. If there's no consequences, they're not going to do it. So, there's going to start being consequences."
            In a dominant third quarter, Baylor shot 73.3 percent (11-of-15) while holding West Virginia to just 4-of-18 from the floor and stretched the lead to 74-31 with a 17-3 run that was capped by a pair of Ursin free throws.
            Baylor's defense was spearheaded by junior wing DiDi Richards, who held Tynice Martin to eight points. Coming in averaging 16.2 points per game, Martin was just 2-of-14 overall and 1-of-10 from 3-point range.
            "She's just asked to do it night in and night out, with her size and length," Mulkey said. "She makes us go on the defensive end because of her energy. I wish I could have that child for a long time, because not many kids will commit to that end of the floor like she dies."
            Queen Egbo (10) also scored in double figures for the Lady Bears, with 6-4 senior All-American Lauren Cox recording a season-high 13 rebounds to go with six rebounds, two assists and a block.
            Kysre Gondrezick and Madisen Smith had 15 and 12 points, respectively, to lead the Mountaineers, who suffered their second-straight lopsided loss. West Virginia was coming off a 73-49 loss at home to Oklahoma.
            Carey said this year's Baylor team is deeper than last year's squad that went 37-1 and won the national championship.
            "(KalanI) Brown, you knew where she was going to be," he said. "These girls, they're all over the place. You don't know where they're going to be. They got a lot of fast breaks, but they got twice as many as they would have got because of bad shots on our part."
            The Lady Bears go back on the road to face TCU (12-3, 3-1) at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday in Fort Worth before back-to-back home games against Texas Tech and Iowa State.