No. 14 WBB Sets Program Record for Made Threes in 80-Point Win over McNeese

Friday, November 24

Waco, Texas

2 PM

Baylor

4-0,0-0Big 12

124

McNeese

2-5,0-0Southland

McNeese

Baylor

124

No. 14 WBB Sets Program Record for Made Threes in 80-Point Win over McNeese

11/24/2023 4:14:00 PM | Women's Basketball

Box Score

By Jerry Hill
Baylor Bear Insider

WACO, Texas – When the Baylor women set the previous program record with 15 made 3-pointers four years ago, Juicy Landrum made 14 of them by herself.

On Friday, the 14^th-ranked Bears shared the wealth.

Eight different players contributed to a school-record 17 made treys (on 32 attempts) in an 80-point blowout victory, 124-44, over the McNeese State Cowgirls in an afternoon matinee at the Ferrell Center.

Dre'Una Edwards had her first double-double in a Baylor uniform and 24^th in her career . . . in the first quarter, finishing with 15 points and 13 rebounds. Six other players put up double-digit points, led by Bella Fontleroy with 19 points off the bench, while Jana Van Gytenbeek had eight points and a career-high 12 assists.

"Certainly, 17-of-32 from 3 is pretty impressive. Oddly, we shot it better from 3 than 2," said Baylor coach Nicki Collen, whose team improved to 4-0 while scoring its most points in her three seasons.

"We kind of missed some easy ones at the rim, or I would have felt more comfortable sooner in this game. . . . As a coach, the thing you're most proud of is 48 baskets and 43 assisted. That's how I want us to play."

Not only did the Bears share the wealth, they shared the ball, dishing out the second-most assists in school history (43). All 13 players scored at least two points and all but one had an assist.

"I think we're really an unselfish team," Van Gytenbeek said, "so we're always looking for one more pass to get the best possible shot. Coach Nicki is really big on that for us."

Baylor eventually cruised to an 80-point win, but the Cowgirls (2-5) actually led five minutes into the game and trailed by just three late in the opening quarter until Edwards knocked down a 3-pointer with 42 seconds left. McNeese shot 54% in the first quarter (7-of-13), while the Bears missed 19 of 28 shots and grabbed 14 offensive boards.

"Certainly, Dre was getting some of her own misses around the rim back, playing catch with herself down there," Collen said of Edwards, who had 10 points and 10 boards in the first quarter alone.

Edwards said Collen told her she needed to rebound, "so that's what I was doing."

"At the end of the first quarter, when they told me I had a double-double, I didn't realize," Edwards said. "A lot of those were my misses, but I still got the rebound."

Baylor's domination started in the second quarter, when the Bears scored the first 13 points, outscored the Cowgirls 30-4 and held them to 0-for-12 shooting from the field to go up 53-21 at the break.

"We kind of got chewed out a little bit," said Edwards, who sat out the second quarter. "They just told us to go out there and we've got to defend. That was our main thing. We let them score easy buckets in the lane. We just had to go out there play defense, and that's what we did. We got into a little bit of trouble, but we bounced back."

Scoring at least 30 in the last three quarters, BU extended its lead to 90-32 by the end of the third quarter and hit the 100-point mark with 7:20 left on a Fontleroy 3-pointer. The Bears closed the game on a 14-2 run, hitting their last four shots, including 3-pointers by Van Gytenbeek and Yaya Felder.

Baylor's bench proved to be the biggest separator, outscoring the McNeese reserves, 71-18. Felder and Kyla Abraham scored 13 and 10 points, respectively, while Iowa State transfer Denae Fritz had nine points, three rebounds, one assist and a steal in 16 minutes.

Collen calls her team's depth "scary good, and also in some ways scary."

"There are times when players don't get a ton of minutes," Collen said. "And then, you give them an opportunity, and they really take advantage of it. It makes you want to go to them. And at the same time, it's not feasible in tight games to play 13 people. I'm just telling you, that's the most stressful part of games like that for me is getting people minutes and getting them minutes in positions where they're comfortable."

Fontleroy and Sarah Andrews were the only Baylor players that logged more than 20 minutes. The Bears also got double-digit scoring from Aijha Blackwell (14), Felder (13), Darianna Littlepage-Buggs (11) and Andrews (10).

"I think when things aren't going as well as we want them to for the first five," Van Gytenbeek said, "we have people who can come in and bring energy and do what they need to do. I don't think there's a dropoff. Our depth is our strength definitely."

Boston Berry led the Cowgirls with 12 points and six rebounds, but also had seven of McNeese State's 30 turnovers. The Bears finished with a 50-9 edge in points off turnovers and dominated the boards, 68-23.

"When you get as open as we were tonight, you want opportunity," Collen said. "And that was the beginning to me. I felt like we were all trying to get ours. Everyone was trying to get theirs. And when they realized they were going to get theirs if they just moved the ball and rebounded and defended. And we just got so much better as the game went along."

Baylor finishes out a season-opening five-game homestand with a matchup against Alcorn State at 2 p.m. Sunday at the Ferrell Center. The game will be streamed by Big 12 Now on ESPN+.

GAME NOTES

The No. 14 Baylor women's basketball team used an 80-point win to take down McNeese on Friday afternoon at the Ferrell Center.
The 124 points scored by the Bears are the most in a game in the Nicki Collen era and most since notching 136 against Northwestern State on Dec. 18, 2020. Additionally, it ranks fifth all-time in points recorded in a game by BU.
It's just the eighth time in program history Baylor has put up 120-plus points, including overtime games.
With the win, the Bears moved to 4-0 to start the year marking the first time since the 2019-20 campaign BU has won four-straight to begin a season.
Baylor has scored 80-plus in four-straight games to begin the year for just the sixth time in program history and only the second time since the turn of the century.
The team combined for 17 3-pointers, surpassing the previous record of 15 made 3-pointers set against Arkansas State on Dec. 18, 2019. The Bears were 17-for-32 (53.1%) and moved to a perfect 7-0 in the Collen era when shooting 50% or better from range.
The 32 3-point attempts fell one shy of matching the program record (33).
Baylor dished out 43 assists as a team – the second-most in program history – and were led by senior Jana Van Gytenbeek in the category with a career-high 12 dishes.
As a team, Baylor grabbed 68 rebounds, which sits just outside the top-five all-time in program history. Of the 68 boards, 34 of them were offensive, marking the most since at least the 2014-15 campaign when the Bears recorded 35 in a win over Prairie View A&M.
Dre'Una Edwards paced the Bears on the boards, finishing with a game-high 13. She added 15 points for her first double-double at Baylor and 24th overall in her career. The graduate senior notched it in the first quarter, sitting at 10 points and 10 rebounds in the first 10 minutes of action.
Seven players finished in double figures led by sophomore Bella Fontleroy's 19 points off the bench, matching a career-high in the category. It marked just the fifth time in program history that seven-or-more players finished in double figures and first time in the Collen era.
All 13 Bears saw the court and all 13 Bears scored as Baylor's bench scored 71, accounting for over 50% of the team's points.
Sophomore Kyla Abraham finished with a career-high 10 points in 10 minutes off the bench.
Baylor finished with 21 steals – the most since recording 25 against McNeese on Dec. 19, 2020 – led by Aijha Blackwell's career-high four.
The Bears forced 30 turnovers by the Cowgirls, scoring 50 points off McNeese's mistakes.
BU outscored McNeese, 30-4, in the second quarter as the Cowgirls went without a made field goal in the frame.