No. 4 WBB Falls to No. 7 Texas in Big 12 Championship

Sunday, March 13

Kansas City, Mo.

1 PM

Baylor

27-6,15-3Big 12

Texas

26-6,13-5Big 12

Texas

Baylor

No. 4 WBB Falls to No. 7 Texas in Big 12 Championship

3/13/2022 3:31:00 PM | Women's Basketball

Box Score

By Jerry Hill
Baylor Bear Insider
            KANSAS CITY, Mo. – Sometimes, coaches will pore over game film for hours, nit-picking every minute detail, critiquing every decision, not holding anything back.
            This was not one of those games.
            After playing near-flawless the day before in a 91-76 blowout of Oklahoma, fourth-ranked and top-seeded Baylor turned it over 16 times, got into early foul trouble and allowed 50% shooting from inside the arc in losing to seventh-ranked Texas, 67-58, Sunday afternoon in the Big 12 Championship final at Municipal Auditorium.
            "This is a game, I told the team in the locker room, sometimes you just have to throw games in the trash," said first-year Baylor head coach Nicki Collen, whose team had a 12-game winning streak snapped in falling to 27-6. "To me, this is a game we have to throw in the trash. We didn't play good basketball. That wasn't how we got to this point. Give Texas credit. I thought they did a great job of playing with incredible energy and attacking us. Kudos to them, they deserve to be cutting down the nets today."
            UT freshmen Rori Harmon and Aaliyah Moore combined for 32 points to lead the Longhorns (26-6) to their first Big 12 tournament title in 19 years, snapping a 13-game losing streak in a series that Baylor has dominated for more than a decade.
            The Bears, who had won nine of the previous 10 Big 12 tournaments, lost in the final for just the fourth time in program history (11-4).
            "I don't like to lose, so it's going to stick with me a little bit," said Baylor senior All-American NaLyssa Smith, who had 21 points and 10 rebounds for her school-record 24^th double-double this season. "I know we have to move on to the (NCAA) Tournament, but it's bigger than this game. I'm going to go back and watch and see things we could have done better."
            Baylor got a scare a little at the 4:17 mark in the second quarter, when Smith picked up her third foul on a charge and left the court with an apparent knee injury. She initially came back after halftime wearing a knee brace, but removed it and played all 20 minutes in the second half, hitting 6-of-11 from the field and scoring 16 of her game-high 21 points.
            "I never thought about not coming back," said Smith, who was named to the all-tournament team along with Oklahoma's Madi Williams, Iowa State's Ashley Joens, UT's Lauren Ebo and Harmon, who was named the Most Outstanding Player. "My knee did hurt, but it's bigger than any injury. An injury is what you make it, so I feel like I was able to go back out there and compete with my team."
            Smith also became the eighth player in program history to score 2,000 career points and the seventh with 2,000 career points and 1,000 career rebounds.
            "I think the goal with her was to see how it felt, and we would have pulled her very, very quickly had she said she didn't want or felt . . ." Collen said. "Because it is bigger than one game. She is a competitor, obviously. She went and got a double-double again, maybe playing on one wheel."
            Baylor led for most of the first quarter and tied it up at 14-14 on a three-point play by Smith with 26 seconds left, but Harmon hit a jumper in the final seconds to give the Longhorns a lead they would never relinquish.
            "Some really special young ladies that played their absolute guts out," second-year Texas head coach Vic Schaefer said. "You don't win on paper. You don't' win on whose supposed to win, or however many they have won in a row. We haven't been here that long, so it doesn't matter. What matters is today."
            Trailing by as many as 15, Baylor got back within seven points four times in the fourth quarter, but couldn't get enough stops to pull it out.
            "You look at a game we lost by nine points, and we were 11-for-20 from the foul line," Collen said. "I don't necessarily expect us to go 20-for-20, but we stay in the game, keep pressure on them, we're not heaving shots up at the end of the game if we're in a one- or two-possession game.
            "It makes your ability to play with your playbook totally different when you're down four instead of down nine late. We have to step up in the big moments in big games and make free throws."
            Harmon finished with 20 points, five rebounds, five assists and no turnovers while playing all 40 minutes. Moore, who had not scored in the Longhorns' first two tournament games, had a career-high 12 points to go with five rebounds.
            Jordan Lewis and Ja'Mee Asberry combined to hit five 3-pointers and scored 13 points apiece for the Bears. After tying a school record with just two turnovers in Saturday's semifinal against Oklahoma, Baylor had 16 against Texas and was outscored, 19-5, in points off turnovers.
            Projected as a No. 1 regional seed going into the day, Baylor was picked as the No. 2 seed in the NCAA Tournament Wichita Region and will host the first and second rounds at the Ferrell Center. The Bears will face Big West Conference champion Hawaii (20-9), the No. 15 seed, on Friday at a time to be announced.