WBB Outlasted by West Virginia, 63-52

Saturday, March 4

Waco, Texas

5 p.m.

Baylor

19-11,10-8Big 12

West Virginia

19-10,10-8Big 12

West Virginia

Baylor

WBB Outlasted by West Virginia, 63-52

3/4/2023 7:06:00 PM | Women's Basketball

Box Score Box Score (PDF)

Bears fall on senior night in season closer

By Jerry Hill
Baylor Bear Insider
            Dr. Jekyll, meet Mr. Hyde.
            Looking nothing like the team that handed 12^th-ranked Texas just its second home-court loss of the season five days earlier, the Baylor women were outscored 17-6 in the fourth quarter and scored a season-low 52 points in finishing the regular season with a 63-52 loss to the visiting West Virginia Mountaineers Saturday night at the Ferrell Center.
            "This was not us today," said Baylor coach Nicki Collen, whose team fell to 19-11 overall and tied for fourth in the Big 12 at 10-8 with West Virginia (19-10, 10-8) and Oklahoma State (20-10, 10-8). "And it's sad, because to play as well as we did at Texas and kind of follow it up with this, I think I probably feel a lot like (Texas coach Vic Schaefer did at his press conference on Monday where he didn't understand why his team looked like that 48 hours after going on the road at OU. I don't understand why our team didn't execute after having basically two days off."
            In addition to their struggles on the offensive end, hitting just 5-of-21 from outside the arc and a dismal 1-for-9 from the free throw line, the Bears simply had no answer for Madisen Smith.
            After nearly matching her previous career-high (24) with a 20-point first half, the West Virginia fifth-year senior guard was 9-of-18 from the floor, a near-perfect 9-for-10 from the line and finished with 30 points, eight rebounds, seven assists and only one turnover.
            "She played incredible," said first-year West Virginia head coach Dawn Plitzuweit, who's 3-0 versus Collen after sweeping the season series and leading South Dakota to a huge second-round upset in last year's NCAA Tournament. "She was someone who was imploring her teammates to play with toughness and confidence. . . . She really did a lot of good things. That was a special game for her."
            It was South Dakota transfer Kyah Watson, though, that provided the "daggers." Limited to three points through the first three quarters, Watson hit a pair of bookend 3-pointers and two free throws in a 12-0 run to start the fourth quarter that turned a tie ballgame into a double-digit deficit, 58-46.
            "I thought Watson's were daggers," Collen said. "I thought both of them were mistakes on our part. She should never be that open. We were giving her open shots. I thought she was the X-factor."
            It was a disappointing Senior Day for Caitlin Bickle and Ja'Mee Asberry. While Asberry scored a team-high 18 points to go with six rebounds and three steals, Bickle struggled all night and finished with just four points, seven boards, three assists and five of Baylor's 18 turnovers.
            "I don't know if Cait was emotional, these Senior Days are hard," Collen said.
            The two seniors were recognized before and after the game in what could be Baylor's last Big 12 Conference games at the Ferrell Center. Next January, the Bears are slated to start playing conference games at the new Foster Pavilion.
            "I really wanted to go out there and win for them tonight," said junior guard Sarah Andrews, who knocked down three from distance and finished with 13 points. "When I was tired, I was like, 'Hey, you've got to keep fighting, you've got to keep playing for Cait and Ja'Mee.' Nobody wants their Senior Night to end like this, and (we're) most definitely going to try to go win it all in Kansas for them."
            Dropping to the sixth seed with Saturday's loss, the Bears will face third-seeded and 23^rd-ranked Iowa State (19-9, 11-7) in Friday's 7:30 p.m. quarterfinal of the Big 12 Tournament at Kansas City's Municipal Auditorium. The Cyclones, who split the season series with Baylor, nailed down a third-place finish in the league with Saturday's 76-52 rout of Texas Tech and have won four of their last six.
            "It's another chance for us to kind of start a new season, and hopefully we look at it like that," Collen said. "That, after a day off, we're ready to go, we're ready to prepare. We certainly know we're capable of beating (Iowa State). We're just going to have to be ready to play really good basketball."
            Freshman Darianna Littlepage-Buggs finished in double digits for the sixth-straight game, scoring 11 points and grabbing seven rebounds. Asberry's 18 points were the third-most by the graduate student this season, and she finished one shy of her career-high with six boards.
            "We've just got to look at it as (we're) 0-0," Asberry said. "We can just finally flush this away. We don't have to talk about what we did in the past anymore. All we have to talk about is what we're going to do because it's elimination now. It doesn't matter what we did in Big 12 (play) or non-conference. What matters is what we do in the Big 12 Tournament and the NCAA Tournament."
            The No. 5 seed, West Virginia will face fourth-seeded Oklahoma State in Friday's early quarterfinal at 11 a.m. First-round pairings on Thursday will have No. 8 Texas Tech facing No. 9 Kansas State at 5 p.m., followed by No. 7 Kansas versus 10^th-seeded TCU at 7:30.
            Texas (23-8, 14-4) and 16^th-ranked Oklahoma (24-5, 14-4) share the Big 12 regular-season championship, ending Baylor's 12-year reign. The last time the Bears didn't win the conference regular-season title, they were also seeded sixth at the Big 12 Tournament and ended up making the NCAA Tournament Final Four in San Antonio.


NOTABLES

Baylor women's basketball finished the regular season with a 63-52 setback to West Virginia at the Ferrell Center on Saturday.
The contest with the Mountaineers marked the second time in three seasons the Bears had closed the regular season against WVU.
The Bears will be the No. 6 seed headed into the Phillips 66 Big 12 Women's Basketball Championship and face No. 3-seeded Iowa State at 7:30 p.m. on Friday.
Three Bears finished in double figures led by Ja'Mee Asberry's 18 points. It was the third-largest output by the graduate this season. Additionally, she fell a rebound shy of matching a career high, finishing with six on the night.
Sarah Andrews registered 13 points, going a team-best 3-for-6 from 3-point range. The junior guard reached double figures in 15 of 18 Big 12 games this season.
For the sixth-straight outing, Darianna Littlepage-Buggs finished in double figures, adding 11 points. She finished a trio of rebounds shy of a double-double but led the Bears on the glass with teammate Caitlin Bickle as the duo grabbed seven apiece.
Bickle and Littlepage-Buggs each dished out a team-high three assists, while Asberry tallied a team-high three steals.
The Bears outscored the Mountaineers in the paint 24-14.