Baylor vs. North Carolina A&T

[Bob_Ballew]

Reading an article on the game between North Carolina A&T and A&M, it sounds as if this team likes to press a great deal. A&M had almost 20 turnovers. A&T also scored over half their points in the paint.

It's always interesting to see how your team matches up against a team that has also played one of your conference opponents. Anything can happen of course, but it is interesting to compare stat sheets after such games.

I am hoping to see balanced scoring again tonight from the Lady Bears. Getting off to a sluggish start again will be disapointing. I would like to see fewer turnovers than we had in the Rice game. Rice did not apply that much pressure. We just turned the ball over trying to force things. One thing I have noticed is how the post players tend to put the ball on the floor when they should simply shoot. Many times, they are in good position, yet they allow the double team to come to them by not pulling the trigger faster.

Defense wins games! Defense sets the tone for a game and can open up your offense. It frustrates and wears down the opponent and it gives you confidence. If Baylor can play tough D, we should win this one. However, we must stay out of foul trouble.

[Scamp]

Louisiana ladies in Ferrell face-off

Two of Louisiana’s favorite daughters will be on opposing sidelines tonight when Baylor’s Kim Mulkey of Tickfaw faces North Carolina A&T’s Patricia Cage-Bibbs of Choudrant.

The ninth-ranked Lady Bears (10-1) host Cage-Bibbs’ upset-minded Aggies (7-4) at 7 tonight at the Ferrell Center in the second matchup of coaches that have combined for 597 career victories. Last year, five players scored in double figures to lead Baylor to an 89-40 rout.

“I know this is a much-improved North Carolina A&T team,” said Mulkey, who is seven wins shy of her 200th win in eight years at Baylor. “You won’t see as big a presence in the paint, but they’re very athletic and like to push the ball up the floor. We have to be able to defend off the dribble and be good in help-side defense.” ...

“I think we’ve got to continue to get contributions from everybody,” Mulkey said. “Like the Rice coach said, we’re unpredictable. You don’t know who’s going to score the next basket. And that’s a good thing.” ...

http://www.wacotrib.com/sports/conte...cladybear.html

It's a new year and, hopefully, the "unpredictable" Lady Bears will start out strong. No more coming from behind!

[BearLady]

Baylor leads 54-16 at the half. The Lady Bears have come out skorching in the first half, hitting 80% from the field. :)

Tizzy has nailed 4 3-pointers in the first half and has 14 points total. The remaining scoring has been fairly balanced as well. Rachel also has 14 points. JB, Jones and Griffin have gotten extended minutes too.

Let's keep it up in the second half!

[BearLady]

The Lady Bears prevail 89-48 tonight. Rachel scored a career-high 28 points and Tizzy had 22 points, including 5 3-pointers.

Coach Kim was able to put different combinations on the floor together, with the frosh especially gaining valuable minutes.

Great game, Lady Bears! Now it's on to Texas State!

[spooky]

Baylor leads 54-16 at the half. The Lady Bears have come out skorching in the first half, hitting 80% from the field. :)

Tizzy has nailed 4 3-pointers in the first half and has 14 points total. The remaining scoring has been fairly balanced as well. Rachel also has 14 points. JB, Jones and Griffin have gotten extended minutes too.

Let's keep it up in the second half!

That first half may have been the best 20 minutes of all-around basketball I've seen us play since I've been watching. We only missed 5 shots all half, and got an offensive board on 3 of those. And the offensive outburst was matched with great, intensive defense. Rachel Allison ended the game with a career high 28 points plus 8 rebounds and 3 assists. And while NCA&T wasn't exactly Top 25 caliber, they're 105 in the RPI, and only lost to A&M by 9 in College Station on Sunday.

The only real negative from the game is that Danielle Wilson left late in the first half, and never returned to the bench. the preliminary call is a high-ankle sprain, and hopefully nothing more serious than that. We've been really lucky on the injury front the last 3-4 years, and this year's depth-challenged team definitely needs to keep that streak going.

[ChiBears]

one of the most critical plays may turn out to be Danielle going down with the sprain. High ankle sprains can be troublesome. Danielle is about to become very good friends with the ice bucket!

Also thought the trap on the wings that A&T threw at us gave our perimeter players a little trouble. Better use that game film to get ready for the Big 12 defenses that'll be throwing that us with bigger, quicker players.

On a positive note, liked Kelli at guard and Tizzy at the 2 and Jessica Morrow had another really solid game, I thought. That's several in a row for her and that's big.

Rach hits another three, JB gets lots of playing time, and though there were a few turnovers that looked like what I've been complaining about with respect to her, all in all, I thought she took some steps forward in the confidence department.

Some really nice fast breaks...if we can get the offensive rebound, we're really dangerous down the court.

Thought Melissa J. passed up a couple of open shots again. Know that she's out there with a lot of good, experienced shooters, but if she's not getting confidence in preseason, wonder if it will be there in conference if needed. ON the other hand, KM seems to be a whiz at drawing up plays designed specifically to get a particular player open in spots she feels comfortable shooting and I imagine Melissa's time will come.

Well, know we have one more preconference game, but I'm really ready to get the show on the road. Still don't know if this team is as good as they seem to be (which is PRETTY DARNED GOOD!) or if it's been the competition, but I'll find out soon enough!

Go Lady Bears!

[spooky]

Rach hits another three, JB gets lots of playing time, and though there were a few turnovers that looked like what I've been complaining about with respect to her, all in all, I thought she took some steps forward in the confidence department.




Whoever predicted Rachel Allison would be tied for the team lead in 3-point % at this point, heck at any point in the season, stand up and claim your genius award. (Okay, so she's only 3-7, but that's 3 more than she had her first two years!) JB did look decent in her extended minutes. She still seems like someone needs to take a wrench and tighten her joints a bit, but she always gives great effort out there. And she did actually use both arms to grab a rebound at least once tonight :)

I am a bit worried about Danielle's ankle. Some of the more severe ones can hang on awhile. It's a good sign I hope that she walked off the court on her own and without favoring it a ton, but it's obviously gonna be tough for her to be back 100% for the start of conference in a week.

Morrow had the kind of game that didn't make an impression on me during the game, but looking at the box score, she did alot of things other than score - 7 pts, 7 rebounds, 3 steals and 3 blocks. I'll take solid production like that almost any night.

[Scamp]

I wish Kim had been asked why she pulled Danielle out of the game in the first minute, substituting Jessika Bradley. My guess: Kim wanted JB to get significantly more playing time without feeling the pressure of being a starter. (Of course, if you go in at 19:22, you're pretty much a starter.) It was a good move, giving JB more time, since in her post-game radio show Kim said Danielle will probably not play on Friday against Texas State.

[Bob_Ballew]

I'm also worried that Danielle's ankle will take awhile to heal.

Kelli Griffin is going to be a great point guard. It was good to see her run the point with Angela at the 2. She made two SPECTACULAR assists.

As impressed as I was with Jessica Morrow's stats, she made several lousy passes that blew me away. We need to take care of the ball better if we expect to compete for a Big XII title. Careless mistakes like that will cost us dearly in conference play.

As I mentioned in an earlier post....defense leads to offense. The Lady Bears did a great job of setting the tone for the game after the first 3 or 4 minutes. The defensive effort and movement was very good. I was surprised by the margin of victory after reading about the A&M game. Being road weary can take a lot out of a team and I think it really showed with the A&T team. I felt that Baylor was road weary against Stanford. They must have eaten too much seafood at Fisherman's Wharf the night before the game. ;)