By Max Calderone | Sports Writer
The machine that is the No. 3 ranked Baylor Lady Bears basketball team showed no signs of slowing down Saturday night, defeating unranked TCU 85-53 in Fort Worth.
Already Big 12 regular season champions, the Lady Bears kept rolling to pick up their 24th consecutive win.
Senior guard Kristy Wallace led all scorers with 19 points. Junior center Kalani Brown picked up 12 points and 11 rebounds, adding another double-double, along with sophomore forward Lauren Cox‘s 11 points and 12 rebounds.
All five Lady Bears starters finished in double figures.
Baylor (27-1, 17-0) started the ballgame on a 13-0 run over the opening 5:04, which included a couple made three-point shots by Cox and sophomore guard Juicy Landrum. Brown had five of the game’s first seven points.
TCU sophomore guard Kianna Ray was able to stop the bleeding for the Horned Frogs as she hit a three with 4:43 remaining in the first quarter. From there, TCU (18-10, 9-8) and Baylor traded scores throughout the last four minutes of the opening period and began the second quarter with the Lady Bears ahead 23-12.
At the 8:15 mark, Brown fed Cox, her partner in the post, for a layup to begin the scoring in the second. Then, freshman guard Alexis Morris got on the statsheet with a knockdown jumper with 7:45 left to put Baylor up 27-14.
Both teams went back and forth at the free-throw line, as there were only three made field goals over the next five minutes. It was a Wallace jumper that extended the Lady Bears lead to 20.
Baylor kept its foot on the gas pedal in the waning moments of the first half as Morris hit her first three-pointer of the game and the Lady Bears went up 43-22. Brown added a layup with 18 seconds remaining for Baylor to take a 45-27 lead into halftime.
Brown and Landrum hit back-to-back layups to begin the third quarter, but the Horned Frogs answered with two triples by senior guard Sydney Coleman and junior forward Amy Okonkwo. Wallace sank one from deep at the 6:45 mark to keep Baylor ahead by 20.
Later in the quarter, senior forward Dekeiya Cohen scored seven straight points in a span of a minute and a half to push the lead to 66-37. Wallace knocked down another three with 12 seconds to go in the quarter, and the Lady Bears headed into the fourth with a 30 point lead.
Wallace carried her hot-hand into the last period of play, hitting consecutive jumpers between the seven and eight minute markers as the game slipped away from TCU. Morris drilled a jump shot of her own to put the Lady Bears up 77-45 with just six minutes remaining.
Baylor never eased up, even as freshman guard Didi Richards scored her only two points of the night, a layup with 3:14 left to go. Freshman guard Moon Ursin was the only Baylor player not to score in the game.
Baylor hit seven shots from downtown in the ballgame, including three by Wallace. The Lady Bears shot 46 percent from the field and converted 18 of 22 attempts at the free-throw line.
Baylor will wrap up its 2018 regular season Monday night with an 8 p.m. game against West Virginia. Cohen and Wallace will be celebrated as part of the Senior Night festivities.
