No. 5 WBB Dominates Texas Tech, 82-57

Sunday, March 6

Waco, TX

2 PM

Baylor

25-5,15-3Big 12

Texas Tech

11-18,4-14Big 12

Texas Tech

Baylor

No. 5 WBB Dominates Texas Tech, 82-57

3/6/2022 3:56:00 PM | Women's Basketball

Box Score Box Score (PDF)

Bears' performance highlighted by career day from NaLyssa Smith

By Jerry Hill
Baylor Bear Insider
            It was nothing Baylor Director of Athletics Mack Rhoades or anyone else had to tell her. Nicki Collen knew when she took this job in May that winning championships is the expectation.
            That's the "enormous amount of pressure" that came with following Kim Mulkey, who had won 11-consecutive Big 12 regular-season titles to go with three national championships.
            So, what the fifth-ranked Baylor Bears (25-5, 15-3) did Sunday afternoon might be just meeting the expectations, but it seems like it's a lot more than that.
            Senior All-American NaLyssa Smith made sure it was a Senior Day to remember, scoring a career-high 35 points to go with 12 rebounds for her 21^st double-double of the season in leading Baylor to an 82-57 rout of Texas Tech to clinch the outright league title. The Bears have only shared it once in the last 12 years and celebrated a Big 12 championship on Senior Day for the first time since March 2, 2011, when they blew out Missouri, 84-52.
            "Our whole focus this week was, we don't want to lose on Senior Day," said Smith, who was 13-of-21 from the floor and 8-for-8 from the line. "We did everything we could to get this win. And it's always fun to win another conference championship."
            Smith and fellow seniors Queen Egbo and Caitlin Bickle went 4-for-4 in Big 12 regular-season championship and can win their third Big 12 Championship title as the No. 1 seed for next week's tournament in Kansas City, Mo. (The 2020 tournament was canceled by COVID.)
            Baylor also became the first team since Tech in 2000 to start 0-2 in league play and win a Big 12 title. The Bears won 15 of their last 16 games, including the last 10-straight.
            In the locker room after an 83-77 loss to Oklahoma on Jan. 12 in Norman, Collen said she looked "every kid in the eye and asked them individually, 'Are you going to quit?'''
            "I didn't mean quit playing basketball, I was like, 'Are you going to quit? Do you still believe?''' Collen said. "And every one of them said, 'Yes.' From then on, we just chipped away at it. And they just kept believing. They believed in one another. And I firmly believe that the people that didn't believe in us, the people that doubted us, really motivated us. We needed a little chip on our shoulder to go out there and prove it."
            Anyone still doubting?
            "Putting in a new system and having new pieces, I knew it was going to take time offensively and defensively to gel," Collen said. "I think we did that at the right time and we kept believing and here we are."
            Getting off to a great start, Smith scored 16 of Baylor's first 20 points and personally doubled up the Lady Raiders (11-18, 4-14) before Bryn Gerlich knocked down a jumper with 1:07 left in the first quarter. Jaden Owens hit the first of her three 3-pointers to give the Bears a 23-10 lead going into the second period.
            "We just shoot the basketball well when we play through the paint," Collen said. "When you as a coach can dial up about anything against what they do, they were really struggling to defend us early. They went to a zone, we scored on three possessions in a row, and that was it. . . . We're executing well late in the season. We know where we want to go. We're making the extra passes and doing what we need to do to be successful."
            While Smith didn't stay on that 64-point pace, she still had as many points as Tech at the half, with Baylor leading 45-22.
            "She's just a matchup problem," Tech coach Krista Gerlich said. "She's got some really good pieces around her, so it's hard to try to double her in some spots. I thought she got some really easy looks at the basket early. We got away from what we were trying to do, and it became kind of easy for her. She's just a dynamic player that can score in a variety of ways. We just didn't have the manpower to get her slowed down today."
            Defensively, the Bears did a job on Vivian Gray, who was held to 3-of-17 from the floor, 1-for-5 from outside the arc and just 10 points, less than half of her 20.8-point average. Bickle, who made her first start of the season and second-career start, didn't let her breathe and kept her from driving to the basket.
            "I started the five seniors (including Asberry and Jordan Lewis)," Collen said, "and it just happened to be that it was a game that it was a great matchup lineup for us. . . . Not unlike we did against Ashley Joens, we did the same thing to Vivian Gray today. We just made her inefficient. She didn't like Cait. We got size on her early, and then anytime they screened, we were switching someone even bigger on her, whether it was Lys or Queen."
            Gerlich and Taylah Thomas led the Lady Raiders with 12 and 11 points, respectively. Baylor won a tight rebounding battle, 33-29, and held Tech to 40% from the floor overall and 3-of-12 from outside the arc.
            With the game well in hand, Smith went to the bench with 49.9 seconds left after making back-to-back baseline jumpers to top her previous high of 33 that she set eight days ago in an 85-77 win over Kansas.
            "In a Senior Day game, there's that fine line between being out there and sharing the spotlight and going for personal records," Collen said. "And also understanding that this is a team that we could play again on Friday and having respect for them. I was, quite frankly, running plays for Lys so that she could break it and I could get her out."
            As each of the three seniors exited the game, including Egbo after she picked up her fifth foul with 1:16 left, they were greeted by standing ovations from the crowd of 5,100. Bickle and Oklahoma State transfer Ja'Mee Asberry have both announced they're coming back for the 2022-23 season.
            "It was fun for me and all the other seniors," Smith said. "It was heartfelt, and you're not going to feel that a lot, so I'm glad I got to experience that at Baylor."
            Owens knocked down three 3-pointers and went 5-for-5 from the field to score a season-high 13 points, two shy of her career-high against Iowa State last year. Egbo had eight points and five rebounds before fouling out, Bickle chipped in with six points, six assists and four rebounds and grad transfer Jordan Lewis added five points and six assists in winning her first conference title.
            "I challenged them that for us right now, I want to cherish every day I have with this group," Collen said. "I want them to cherish every day they have together, to understand this might be the best team they ever play on. Hopefully, it's not, but if it is, they've really poured themselves into it and gotten a lot out of it."
            Baylor has a first-round bye at the Big 12 Tournament and will play at 1:30 p.m. Friday in a quarterfinal matchup against the winner of a Thursday night game between eighth-seeded Tech and ninth-seeded Oklahoma State (8-19, 3-15).