No. 4 WBB Cruises Past No. 21 Oklahoma in Big 12 Semifinals

Saturday, March 12

Kansas City, Mo.

12PM

Baylor

27-5,15-3Big 12

Oklahoma

24-8,12-6Big 12

Oklahoma

Baylor

No. 4 WBB Cruises Past No. 21 Oklahoma in Big 12 Semifinals

3/12/2022 2:16:00 PM | Women's Basketball

Box Score Final Book (PDF)

NaLyssa Smith sets a new career high with 37 points in win

By Jerry Hill
Baylor Bear Insider
            KANSAS CITY, Mo. – Nothing NaLyssa Smith does on a basketball court should be surprising anymore. But, this was a whole different level.
            Determined to avenge two regular-season losses to 21^st-ranked Oklahoma, the senior All-American scored a career-high 37 points to lift fourth-ranked and top-seeded Baylor to a 91-76 blowout of the Sooners Saturday afternoon at Municipal Auditorium that sends the Bears (27-5) to the Big 12 Championship final for the 11^th-straight time.
            "No surprise there that she delivers for us," said senior forward Caitlin Bickle, who topped her own previous high of 13 in the first half and finished with 21 points.
            "She is the best player in the entire country. Every single time when it comes down to it, we're going to count her. Nine times out of 10, she is going to make that winning basket or make that winning play for us. And we've got a lot of trust in her."
            Smith, who added 11 rebounds to tie a program record with her 23^rd double-double of the season, paid off that trust by hitting 7-of-9 shots from the floor and scoring 14 points in the third quarter when Baylor broke open a game that was tight for the first two quarters.
            Capping a 14-2 run at the start of the third, Smith skied high to catch a lob from Queen Egbo and scored over Kelbie Washington to extend Baylor's lead to 61-42 at the 5:35 mark in the third. Smith added four-straight buckets that put the Bears up by 24 points, 69-45, and the Sooners (24-8) never recovered.
            "Today, you saw some things from Lys that she has done her whole career here," said first-year Baylor head coach Nicki Collen, whose team won its 12^th-straight since a 78-77 home-court loss to OU on Feb. 2. "We asked her to go down to the block and play, because they didn't have the size to guard her.
            "We may have looked a little boring, but when you score 91 points, boring is good."
            Taking advantage of that size advantage, Baylor scored 44 points in the paint and got a combined 69 points from Smith, Bickle and Egbo, who finished with 11 points, five rebounds and two blocks. Those three also connected on 27-of-55 shots overall and 14-of-15 from the line.
            "Going into the game, one of our staff had said that in-paint scoring is the difference between when Oklahoma loses and wins," said Bickle, who scored 15 first-half points. "I just wanted to be as aggressive as possible. I didn't know I had 21 until I looked at the end. But, anything I can do for this team, whether it's scoring, rebounding, doing extra plays, I'm all about it."
            Bickle came in four minutes into the game and made an immediate impact, hitting four of her first six shots and knocking down a 3-pointer at the top of the key to give the Bears a 25-18 lead.
            Taylor Robertson keyed a 10-2 run by OU with three free throws and a 3-pointer, and the Sooners took a 38-37 lead with 3:05 left in the half. Smith responded with eight points in a closing 10-2 run that put Baylor back on top, 47-40.
            "We really didn't have an answer for her," Madi Williams said of Smith, who combined with Bickle to score 34 of the Bears' 47 first-half points. Williams and Robertson countered with 27 of their combined 50 points in the first half to keep the Sooners in the game.
            While Baylor continued to attack the post in the third quarter, with Smith scoring 14 points, the Bears also got big 3-pointers from Jordan Lewis and Sarah Andrews that pushed that seven-point halftime lead out to as many as 24.
            After OU whittled the deficit to 15, Baylor scored four points in the last 25 seconds of the quarter on a pair of free throws by Egbo and a Bickle layup to make it 75-56 going into the fourth.
            "I feel like we played to our strength," Collen said. "We have size and strength in the paint, and we played to that. To shoot the ball as well as we did, to balance that from 3, kept them from being able to put extra bodies in the paint to really help on these guys."
            While the "bigs" produced the bulk of the scoring, guards Lewis, Andrews and Ja'Mee Asberry hit 6-of-13 from outside the arc and chipped in with 22 points. That helped Baylor set a school record for 3-pointers made in a single season with 215.
            The Bears also turned it over just once in each half, tying another school record, and outscored OU, 25-2, in points off turnovers.
            "I think a big part of that is the hesitation on where those turnovers come from – the pick-six opportunities," said first-year OU coach Jennie Baranczyk. I thought we did great yesterday in terms of our transition defense. Today, they got us. We need to do a better job of getting back in the paint."
            Williams and Robertson both hit four 3-pointers and scored 33 and 17 points, respectively, to lead the fourth-seeded Sooners.
            Baylor, which has won nine of the previous 10 Big 12 Championship titles, advances to Sunday's 1 p.m. final at Municipal Auditorium and will face seventh-ranked and third-seeded Texas (25-6). The Longhorns beat 10^th-ranked Iowa State for the third-straight time this season, winning 82-73 in overtime.
            The Bears swept the season series from Texas, beating the Longhorns twice in a three-day stretch, and have won 27 of the last 28 meetings.
            Collen became the first first-year coach to make it to the Big 12 final since 1997, when Deb Patterson's Kansas State team lost to Colorado, 55-44, in the league's first tournament.