Story by Kaitlyn DeHaven | Digital Managing Editor, Video by Elisabeth Tharp | Broadcast Sports Director
No. 1-ranked Baylor women’s basketball defeated No. 14-ranked Texas 74-68 Monday night in Austin. The win brought the Lady Bears to 10-0 in conference play.
Baylor took the lead seven minutes into the game and never looked back. The Lady Bears led for for 82.2 percent of the game.
At halftime, Baylor held a 36-29 lead thanks to hot shooting from sophomore guard Moon Ursin.
The Longhorns attempted to make a comeback in the fourth quarter, scoring 28 points to Baylor’s 13, but the effort was not enough.
Baylor head coach Kim Mulkey said while the Lady Bears had a strong lead going into the fourth quarter, she was a bit nervous when the points started stacking up in favor of the Longhorns.
“I get nervous every time I coach. It’s just the way you coach, with a fear of failure,” Mulkey said. “We tend to remember losses better and longer than we do the victories.”
Texas head coach Karen Aston said that although she knows her team will look back on tonight’s game and see ways they could have played better, she’s proud of how well the team kept up.
“I thought that it was good for our team to show a little grit and a little character tonight,” Aston said. “I definitely thought that we didn’t give in at any point and let this thing get away from us completely.”
Mulkey said there were two areas that were very important for the team to stay strong on for the Lady Bears to beat Texas — transition defense and keeping Texas off the offensive board. She said that she felt her team did an outstanding job with both of these areas, and these were large contributors to the win against Texas.
Two of the other key contributing factors to Monday’s win were the highest scoring players this game — Ursin and senior center Kalani Brown. Ursin was on fire Monday night, scoring 20 of the Lady Bears’ 74 points. Ursin scored 12 of her 20 points in the first half. Brown on the other hand, swooped in during the second half, scoring 15 of the 74 points and went 3-for-3 on free throws.
Mulkey said that Ursin has been a great asset to the team this season.
“Moon has been a spark for our team. … Her confidence is just sky-high right now,” Mulkey said. “Moon came in and didn’t miss a beat.
Ursin said that coming into this game, it was most important for her to just keep her composure and play ball. She said that the cheering from the stands really motivated her as she was playing as well.
“I was just stepping up with confidence and knocking them down,” Ursin said. “To look into the stands and see the green and gold — I was just ecstatic.”
Mulkey said the standard they’ve built in the program is something that keeps the team hungry and ready for action.
“We’re still relevant and that’s what you want to be. You want to be relevant. You want to be an elite program,” Mulkey said. “We may never make it to the Final Four again but what we’re doing, I think it’s pretty darn good.”
The Lady Bears look to stay hungry and face the TCU Horned Frogs at noon Saturday in the Ferrell Center.
