MANHATTAN, Kan. – When it comes time to put together the season highlight reel, there's probably a good chance that No. 2/1 Baylor won't go back to Saturday's game at Kansas State. 
            But ultimately, the Lady Bears (21-1, 10-0) did enough to grind out a 54-40 win over the Wildcats (10-11, 4-6) and extend their conference streaks to 51-straight overall and 41-consecutive on the road in beating K-State for the 33^rd time in a row. 
            "It's just an ugly game," said coach Kim Mulkey, who is now three wins shy of her 600^th career victory. "Sometimes in February, you have to do that. Kids get tired, you're on the road, you haven't played each other yet. It wasn't very pretty."
            Juicy Landrum hit her first five shots and finished with 11 points, seven rebounds, five assists and two steals, and NaLyssa Smith added 10 points on 3-of-5 shooting. But, Baylor's other three starters combined to hit just 10-of-39 from the floor and scored 22 points. 
            The difference in the game was a 16-0 second-quarter run by the Lady Bears and a suffocating defense that held K-State to 21 percent shooting overall and 0-for-18 from outside the arc. 
            "I'd like to tell you it was their defense, but I don't think it was," said Mulkey, whose team scored a season-low 54 points and failed to top 60 for the first time in its 14-game winning streak. "I'd like to tell you our defense was great, too, but I don't think it was. It's the grind of the season, you're in the second half of the Big 12 now. That was tough to coach and tough to watch, I'm sure."
            The Wildcats went toe-to-toe through the first 13 minutes of the game and went on top, 15-13, on a jumper by Christianna Carr with 7:16 left in the first half. 
            But from there, Baylor hit seven of its next 10 shots and went on a 16-0 run that was capped by a Te'a Cooper 3-pointer to go up 29-15 and never trailed again. 
            After stretching the lead to as many as 21 late in the third quarter, the Lady Bears missed 11 consecutive shots and gave up 10 unanswered points in a six-minute stretch at the end of the third period and first five minutes of the fourth. 
            Redshirt freshman center Ayoka Lee, who had a double-double with 14 points and 12 rebounds, hit a pair of free throws that made it a 46-36 game with 5:20 left. But, Baylor stopped the run with back-to-back buckets by Cooper and Smith and held on for another road win. 
            "You've got to create your own energy a lot of times on the road," Mulkey said. "We were at a snail's pace, which is not characteristic of us. I think they had maybe one possession where they went to a zone defensively, and we hit one of those 3's and that kind of separated us a little bit."
            Senior forward Peyton Williams chipped in with 12 points and eight rebounds, helping the Wildcats win a tight battle of the boards, 44-43, but Baylor outscored K-State, 30-18, on points in the paint. 
            Cooper and Richards scored eight points apiece, while 6-4 senior All-American Lauren Cox had six points, seven rebounds, three assists, two blocks and a steal. 
            "We knew that the two kids that average double-doubles (Lee and Williams) had to be our primary focus," Mulkey said "The thing that we did is we did not allow the third person from K-State to have an all-world or a very good night, because we knew that Lee and Williams are just hard guards for us."
            Baylor returns home to host second-place TCU (17-4, 8-2) at 7 p.m. Wednesday. The Horned Frogs have won four in a row and eight of their last nine, pulling away late for an 87-74 win on the road at Kansas.