By Jerry Hill
Baylor Bear Insider
This is the seventh in a series profiling this year's inductees for the Baylor Athletics Hall of Fame, which will be posted every week at baylorbears.com.
Odyssey Sims can't find the words to describe what it means to go into the Baylor Athletics Hall of Fame in the same class with fellow women's basketball All-American Brittney Griner.
"It couldn't be any more . . . I don't even know the word that I'm looking for," said Sims, a three-time All-American and four-time All-Big 12 pick who won the Wade Trophy as a senior in 2014.
Perfect, maybe. Apropos.
Whatever the word, it's somehow fitting that the All-American duo and inside-outside combo of the first 40-0 national championship team in the history of NCAA Division I basketball (men's or women's) are the headliners in a 2024 Hall of Fame class that will be inducted in Friday's banquet in the Grand Ballroom at the Hurd Welcome Center.
"Looking back, this is one of my greatest accomplishments, for sure," Sims said. "I didn't think this was going to happen, I'm not going to lie. But I'm very, very grateful. I always say that hard work pays off, and it is definitely paying off for me."
Sims' list of accomplishments could fill a book . . . like, a record book. And she's done it at every level of the game.
Already a household name in the recruiting circles before she even got to high school, the 5-foot-8 point guard etched her name in the record books at Irving MacArthur High School by being named the WBCA/State Farm National High School Player of the Year in 2010 and a Parade magazine and McDonald's All-American.
Before she even came to Baylor, she had her No. 3 jersey retired – the first athlete, male or female, in the history of the Irving ISD (since 1909) to have a jersey retired in any sport. Sims' high school jersey also hung in the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame's Ring of Honor.
Rated the top point guard and No. 3 recruit overall in the 2010 class, she picked Baylor over LSU, Tennessee and Texas A&M.
The Big 12 and National Freshman of the Year in 2011, Sims averaged 13.1 points and 3.1 assists for a 34-3 team that lost to eventual national champion A&M in the region final.
"Coach (Kim) Mulkey told us, 'Whoever wins this game (in the region final) is going to win the national championship,''' Sims said. "Because it's your coach, I said, 'Okay, whatever.' And then when it happened, I was like, 'Dang, this lady really knows basketball.'''
The next year, Sims and the Bears were seldom even challenged in the perfect 40-0 season that was capped with an 80-61 win over Notre Dame in the national championship game in Denver. Their average margin of victory was 26.4 points per game, and only five of the 40 games were decided by less than 10 points.
"Most memorable would definitely be the 40-0 team," Sims said. "You can really just say every game, from 1 to 40, all of them were just fun. It was a historic season for us, we actually got it done. I still have my ring. I just went over to my mom's house the other day and put it on. And I was like, 'Dang, the memories!' That will forever be one of my greatest moments."
With most of that team back, Baylor was poised for a repeat championship in 2013 and had won 36 of its first 37 games before a shocking 82-81 loss to fifth-seeded Louisville in the Oklahoma City Region semifinal. While Griner was held in check with 14 points, Sims pumped in a game-high 29 points and gave the Bears a one-point lead in the final seconds with a pair of free throws.
"I just think when you have a team that hits so many threes (16-of-25), that has never done that . . . in basketball, things can happen," Sims said. "I played my little heart out in that game, literally played my heart out. I felt that one. That's one of those losses that still makes me cringe a little bit, because we were right there."
Not expected to be close to that level the next season, with Griner and a handful of other seniors gone, the Bears defied the odds by sweeping the Big 12 regular-season and tournament titles for the fourth-consecutive year and losing to Notre Dame in the Elite Eight.
"It was basically, in a sense, my team," said Sims, who scored a school-record 1,054 points, the second-most in NCAA Division I history at that time. "It was something that I felt like I was ready for. That year was fun, too. We made it to the Elite Eight. Obviously, didn't make the Final Four, but that was a fun year, and my scoring was through the roof."
Averaging 28.5 points, 4.6 rebounds and 4.6 assists, Sims swept the Wade Trophy, Nancy Lieberman Award, Dawn Staley Award and Frances Pomeroy Naismith Award in one of the best individual seasons in program history. She scored a career-high 47 points in a 133-130 four-overtime loss to Kentucky when she fouled out in the first OT period.
A great on-ball defender, Sims also describes herself as a "good post-passing guard."
"You see a lot of guards that really can't pass to the posts," she said. "That's a big problem on the women's side more, but the men's side is a little bit, too. But to have somebody 6-8 (Griner) that I literally can throw to that I know is going to catch it . . . she was just a phenomenal player and teammate. If we could play together in the WNBA, of course, I wouldn't turn that down. That would be college all over again, just at the pro level. Maybe we're championship contenders, just based off two players. I think Brittney is just amazing."
Drafted by the Tulsa Shock with the No. 2 pick overall in 2014, Sims has played 11 seasons with five different teams in the WNBA. Named to the All-Rookie Team her first season and a WNBA all-star in 2019 with the Minnesota Lynx, Sims has career averages of 11.2 points and 3.8 assists per game.
"I guess you could say I was prepared," she said. "But when I got drafted, I was going into the league with an open mind, just because now I'm playing alongside greats. I'm playing with legends, Hall of Famers. The first half of my rookie year, I was still trying to figure out the game, how fast it was. That second half of my rookie year, that's when I started flourishing. The adjustment wasn't that hard, but you never know."
Joining Sims and Griner in the 2024 Baylor Hall of Fame class are Ekpe Udoh from men's basketball, baseball's Michael Griffin, softball's Whitney Canion Reichenstein, football's Mark Cochran, Nina Secerbegovic from women's tennis and Ronnie Allen from track and field.
The Hall of Fame banquet will be held at 6:30 p.m. Friday in the Grand Ballroom of the Hurd Welcome Center on the Baylor University campus. Also recognized at the banquet will be the 2013 and 2014 Big 12 football championship teams as this year's honor teams.
