Baylor
Texas Tech
No. 5 WBB Hosts Texas Tech for Senior Day
3/4/2022 3:54:00 PM | Women's Basketball
Bears have won 12-straight Big 12 regular-season championships
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5/5 BAYLOR BEARS (24-5, 14-3) Location: Waco,Texas Conference/Affiliation: Big 12 Head Coach: Nicki Collen (Marquette, 1998) Roster | Stats | Game Notes (PDF) |
BAYLOR (24-5, 14-3) vs. TEXAS TECH (11-17, 4-13) March 6, 2022 • 2 p.m. CT Waco, Texas • Ferrell Center LIVE STATS: Stat Broadcast WATCH: Big 12 Now on ESPN+ Talent: Pete Sousa (pxp), Jim Haller (analyst), Brooke Bednarz (reporter) LISTEN: ESPN Central Texas, BaylorBears.com Talent: Derek Smith (pxp), Sophia Young-Malcolm (Analyst) Baylor Social Media:    |
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TEXAS TECH LADY RAIDERS (11-17, 4-13) Location: Lubbock, Texas Conference/Affiliation: Big 12 Head Coach: Krista Gerlich (Texas Tech, 1993) Roster | Stats (PDF) | Game Notes (PDF) |
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By Jerry Hill
Baylor Bear Insider
Nicki Collen still remembers the feeling of signing two-time WNBA champion Renee Montgomery as a free agent in her first big move as head coach of the Atlanta Dream four years ago.
"I don't know if there's an equivalency outside of sports when someone believes in you enough," Collen said. "Renee Montgomery was the first person that said yes to me."
Those same emotions came flooding back last May, when Alabama grad transfer Jordan Lewis was the first player to tell her, "Coach, I'm coming" after she took over as the head coach for Baylor women's basketball. Even before she got commitments from any of the returning players, Collen got a "yes" from the 5-foot-7 guard from Windermere, Fla.
"She, obviously, had a plan to come to Baylor," Collen said of Lewis, a grad transfer who had signed with Baylor five days before Kim Mulkey left to take the head job at LSU, "but it would have been very easy to change course. Jordan Lewis could have gone a-ny-where in this COVID year. I'm just so grateful, so thankful, that she believed in me and she still believed this was the right place."
Along with fourth-year seniors NaLyssa Smith and Queen Egbo, Lewis will be recognized on Senior Day before the fifth-ranked Bears (24-5, 14-3) host Texas Tech (11-17, 4-13) at 2 p.m. Sunday at the Ferrell Center.
"I think this team has respected her from the very beginning," Collen said of Lewis, who is averaging 12.1 points and 5.3 assists per game. "She's not super loud, she's not the most outgoing, but there's a maturity and composure about her that just makes us a better basketball team. I think she's got a great basketball IQ and she's going to be a pro."
In her sixth year of collegiate basketball, Lewis has set an NCAA Division I record with 159 games played (UConn's Kalana Greene played in 157 games from 2005-10) and has scored 1,931 career points.
"I think it means I've been around a long time," said Lewis, a second-team All-SEC pick last year at Alabama who played eight games before suffering an injury as a junior in 2018-19. "At this point, a lot of people would have lost that opportunity or something would have happened to end their career. So, it's just an honor to still have the opportunity to go out there and play."
After DiDi Richards and DiJonai Carrington went in last year's WNBA Draft and four other guards transferred, Lewis filled a huge void at the point guard position.
"She's made a huge impact," said Smith, who's averaging 21.8 points and 11.7 rebounds per game. "You trust her with the ball in her hand. I trust her to make that winning pass, to make the winning shot. She just has so much experience."
At Alabama, Lewis scored a career-high 32 points in an 80-71 win over 10th-seeded North Carolina in last year's NCAA Tournament, but the Crimson Tide never finished higher than seventh in the SEC and twice went to the WNIT quarterfinals in their only other postseason appearances.
In Monday's 87-62 win over ninth-ranked Iowa State that clinched Baylor's 12th-consecutive Big 12 regular-season title, Lewis hit 5-of-5 shots from 3-point range and scored 17 of her 23 points in the second half.
"Being on a team for five years that didn't even break into the top five in conference, to turn around and do something like this is special," Lewis said. "Everyone here has had multiples of them, but I think it still means a lot to everyone else, just with all the changes and starting 0-2 (in the league) and people thinking we could never make it back to the top. I feel like this one was one of the hardest ones this school has had to get in a while."
This was, by far, the toughest one for Smith, Egbo and Caitlin Bickle, a fourth-year senior who announced she's coming back in 2022-23 for a COVID year. In the three previous years, the Bears lost a total of two Big 12 games and won the league title by at least four games.
"This last one, it means the most to me," Smith said. "I'd say the (2019) national championship and this conference championship have been my proudest moments at Baylor, just because we started 0-2. So many people were like, 'Oh, they're not as good anymore.' I just felt like we kind of took that chip on our shoulder, and we were going to make it happen."
Egbo, who's averaging 11.1 points, 8.6 rebounds and 1.8 blocks per game, said this one is special, "only because of all the adversity we've been through and all the challenges and bumps along the way."
"That makes this one so much more memorable," Egbo said. "Whereas in the past, it was kind of easy. We might have had a few games where they gave us a run for our money. But, for most of the time from my freshman to my junior year, we kind of coasted. Junior year was a little hard, too, but I would definitely say this was the hardest one by far that we've had to work for."
Unless Iowa State (24-5, 13-4) gets upset by West Virginia (14-13, 7-10) on Saturday, Baylor will still have to beat Texas Tech on Sunday to win the conference championship outright. But, after beating the Cyclones twice by 20-plus points, the Bears have already clinched the No. 1 seed for next week's Big 12 Tournament in Kansas City.
"We're the No. 1 seed regardless, but we're still playing for NCAA Tournament seeding," Collen said. "It's Senior Day, we hope we have a great crowd to not just celebrate our seniors but a championship. I think the pressure is, do you really want to celebrate a championship if you've just lost a basketball game? The pressure is to play well, the pressure is to show up and compete at a high level, because that's our standard."
Sunday's game will be streamed by Big 12 Now on ESPN+, with Pete Sousa, former Baylor men's basketball head coach Jim Haller and Brooke Bednarz calling the action.
TWELVE IN A ROW
• Baylor clinched a share of the regular-season Big 12 title with a 25-point win on the road at No. 8 Iowa State in front of a record crowd at Hilton Coliseum.
• BU's streak of 12 regular-season titles in a row is the longest active streak in the country in men's AND women's hoops.
• The streak ties for fourth all-time in WBB behind Green Bay 20 (1999-2018), Louisiana Tech 15 (2003-17), Stanford 14 (2001-14) and Old Dominion 12 (1993-2004).
• With 24 combined conference championships, Baylor ties Stanford for the most among Power 5 schools since 2004-05.
• With a win over Texas Tech on Sunday or an Iowa State loss on Saturday, Baylor would clinch the championship outright.
• Baylor became the first school since Texas Tech in 2000 to start league play 0-2 and end up winning the conference title.
DOMINANT PERFORMANCE
• The stakes were high and the lights were bright as No. 5 Baylor walked into a raucous Hilton Coliseum to take on No. 8 Iowa State with a Big 12 championship on the line.
• The first 14 minutes featured six lead changes and a three-point ISU lead but the rest of the game was dominated by the Bears.
• For the second time this season, BU scored the most points that ISU allowed all year (87).
• Baylor shot 51.5 percent from the floor, a season high allowed by the Cyclones.
• Defensively, BU held Iowa State to a season-low 18.2 percent from the 3-point line. Entering Monday night's game, ISU led the country with a 39.4 3-point percentage.
• Only two opponents have pulled down 20+ rebounds against Iowa State this season: Queen Egbo with 21 (1/23) and NaLyssa Smith with 20 (2/28).
WALKING DOUBLE-DOUBLE
• NaLyssa Smith is fifth in the country with 20 double-doubles on the season. That mark ties her for second in BU history for double-doubles in a single season alongside Maggie Davis-Stinnett (1987-88).
• Smith is fourth in program history with 48 career double-doubles. She's one away from tying Davis-Stinnett (1986-89, 1990-91)
• The senior is averaging 21.8 points and 11.7 rebounds per game which ranks No. 9 and No. 9 in the country, respectively. She is one of two players in the country who is averaging 21+ points and 11+ rebounds per game.
LET IT FLY
• Baylor's program record for triples made came on Dec. 18, 2019 against Arkansas State when Juicy Landrum caught fire and set an NCAA record with 14 triples. Besides that record-setting performance, BU hadn't drained more than a dozen shots from deep since 2011.
• BU's record for 3-point attempts in a season came in 2013-14 when the Bears attempted 596 3s.
• From that season to 2020-21, Baylor made 10 or more 3-pointers in a game only five times across a total of 281 games (1.78 percent). BU has done so five times this season.
• At Kansas, Baylor nearly set a record with a 14-for-29 display from the perimeter. BU's 14 treys marked the second most in program history.
• Prior to this year, only 14 Bears had made six or more 3s in a game. Two of them had done it multiple times (Makenzie Robertson, 2012, 2014) and Jennifer King (1990, 1991, 1993).
• Sarah Andrews and Ja'Mee Asberry have already joined that elite club this season. Andrews went 6-for-8 against Morehead State and from deep and Asberry fired off 6-of-8 against Alcorn State. Asberry then went 6-for-11 at Kansas, and Andrews set a career-high with a 7-for-10 mark.
• Andrews' seven 3s tied for third in program history. She is now one of six Bears in program history to hit a minimum of seven triples in a game.
• Jordan Lewis joined the club with her 6-of-7 performance against Iowa State.
• Baylor - with 196 3s on the season - has the third-highest 3pointer total for a single season in program history.
• Asberry is fourth in program history with 67 3s made this season.
