FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – Typically, 16^th-ranked Arkansas is a team that lives and dies outside the 3-point arc, averaging better than eight made treys per game. 
            On a night when the Lady Razorbacks (5-1) were just 5-of-20 from distance, they upset the fourth-ranked Baylor Lady Bears, 83-78, by knocking down 30-of-39 from the free throw line and getting a combined 45 points from Big 12 transfers Chelsea Dungee (Oklahoma) and Amber Ramirez (TCU) in Sunday's SEC/Big 12 Challenge at Bud Walton Arena. 
            "It was the difference in the ballgame," said Baylor coach Kim Mulkey, whose team fell to 2-1 with just its sixth loss in the last four seasons. "There are three things that style of offense wants to do – they want to shoot 3's, get to the foul line and score layups. They did two out of three against us very well tonight."
            If an 18-point disparity at the charity stripe (30-12) wasn't enough, Arkansas also scored 20 points off the Lady Bears' 22 turnovers. It was the Lady Razorbacks' first win over a top-5 team since beating No. 2 LSU in 2003 and first time they've knocked off a defending national champion since Tennessee in 1996. 
            "Everybody just came together, and you've got to do that anytime you knock off a team that's got defending national champions on it," said Arkansas head coach Mike Neighbors. "A win over a team like that is validation for all of us."
            While Baylor is still the defending national champion – last year's NCAA Tournament was canceled because of COVID-19 – senior guard DiDi Richards is the only starter remaining from that 2019 team that finished 37-1 and beat Notre Dame in the championship game. NaLyssa Smith and Moon Ursin played a total of 25 minutes off the bench. 
            Conversely, Arkansas got a combined 59 points from its three fifth-year senior transfers – Ramirez (23), Dungee (22) and Destiny Slocum (14) from Oregon State. 
            "Disappointed, but not surprised," Mulkey said. "When you have guards like they have, that have been in college and have the experience – they've got seniors, they've got grad transfers – they know how to get their body into you. . . . A lot of it is their ability to round the corner, draw fouls and get up in you. That's what great players do, but especially players that have played a lot together."
            In a back-and-forth game that featured 14 ties and seven lead changes, Baylor got down 8-2 in the first three minutes, reeled off nine unanswered points to go up 15-11 and was knotted at 19-19 after the first quarter. 
            The tone was set in that period, though, when 6-3 junior center Queen Egbo picked up her second foul at the 4:13 mark. Playing just 11 minutes, Egbo fouled out in the first minute of the fourth quarter and finished with six points, seven rebounds and four turnovers.
            "Queen Egbo's got to quit fouling," Mulkey said. "In a big game, she's got to be in the ballgame for us. That's not anybody's fault but Queen. And I've told her that."
            As the fouls piled up, DiJonai Carrington and Sarah Andrews also fouled out and Smith and Ursin both had four fouls by the end of the game. Arkansas hit 14-of-18 from the line in the fourth quarter and 30-of-39 for the game. 
            "We were making mistakes, fouling a lot," said Carrington, a grad transfer from Stanford who hit two 3-pointers and finished with a game-high 24 points, "but we just kept telling ourselves, get a stop. We knew we could score, we just had to get stops. I think we did a good job of sticking together and never getting down on one another, just reminding ourselves that we're never out of this."
            Trailing by two at the break, Baylor went on a 12-2 run in the third quarter to go up 54-49 when Richards fed Carrington for a layup. Arkansas' decisive answer was a 13-0 run that started with back-to-back layups by Ramirez and a three-point play by Dungee that gave the Lady Razorbacks the lead for good. 
            After Ramirez drained a 3-pointer in the first 20 seconds of the fourth quarter to stretch the lead to 67-57, Baylor clawed its way back in and pulled to within three on a layup by Richards. In her second game back since recovering from a spinal cord nerve injury, Richards finished with eight points, eight assists and seven rebounds, but also turned it over six times. 
            "You see the value of DiDi Richards to our basketball team," Mulkey said. "She's not playing like she's capable of playing yet, nor do you expect that right now. But, you can't take her off the floor because she does so many things for us. . . . Time will help that kid, she will get back in the flow and be the DiDi of old."
            Twice, Baylor got back within two, the last time coming on a Smith layup with 29 seconds left. But, Caitlin Bickle missed an open 3-pointer that would have tied it. 
            "You couldn't ask for a better look," Mulkey said. "When (Arkansas) switched, two of them ended up going to Carrington, which left Bickle wide open. Take that shot, draw that play up anytime again. (Bickle and Carrington) are two kids that you would want to shoot that."
            Smith added 16 points and seven rebounds, shooting 7-for-13 from the field, while Ursin had 14 points and four assists. Makayla Daniels hit three 3-pointers and chipped in 16 points to give Arkansas a fourth double-figure scorer. 
            "I'm not in there just going nuts and crazy," Mulkey said. "You only lost by five, you had a chance to win the game. We just didn't do it. We didn't have enough poise and composure and experience to win today."
            Baylor, which has won 10-consecutive Big 12 regular-season championships, opens league play against West Virginia (4-0) at 6 p.m. CST Thursday in Morgantown before hosting Texas Tech (2-1) the following Monday, Dec. 14. The Mountaineers posted the league's only win in the SEC/Big 12 Challenge (1-7), beating Tennessee, 79-73, in overtime.