By Foster Nicholas | Sports Editor, Aidan Pham | LTVN Broadcast Reporter
WACO, Texas — Behind senior center Aaronette Vonleh’s fifth double-double, No. 4 seed Baylor women’s basketball took down No. 13 seed Grand Canyon in the first round of the NCAA Tournament Friday afternoon at Foster Pavilion.
Missed the game? LTVN’s Aidan Pham breaks down all of the action from Baylor’s 7-point victory.
Battling through double and triple teams, Vonleh scored a team-high 25 points on 10-for-13 shooting with a game-high 11 rebounds to help the Bears (28-7) claim their Round of 64 victory. Head coach Nicki Collen’s crew shot 50% from the floor to make up for 19 turnovers.
“The beauty of Netty [is that] she’s figuring it out,” Collen said. “Now she’s using the combination of touch [and] strength. Obviously, they knew they didn’t have anyone who could guard her … I mean, they were rolling the dice and giving Sarah Andrews open threes, and she just couldn’t burn them. That’s how much respect they had for Netty, as they were willing to roll the dice and give Sarah Andrews wide-open threes. That’s where her game has gone.
We’re going to need it again on Sunday, whoever we play.”
Grand Canyon (32-3) jolted in front, going 5-for-7 from the floor, forcing Nicki Collen to call a timeout three minutes into the game, trailing 10-6. The Bears clawed their way back at the free throw line, going 7-for-10 from the charity stripe in the first quarter to trim the deficit to 18-17.
“I don’t want to call that timeout, but I felt the nerves,” Collen said. “I felt that we needed to settle down. You tell them, ‘Hey, they’re going to reach, claw, scrap.’ I told them, ‘You’re going to have claw marks on your arms at the end of the day.’ And we do. We have blood all over us.”
Junior forward Bella Fontleroy gave the green and gold their first lead with a putback layup to open the second quarter. However, the lead would stick for a mere 40 seconds as Baylor went scoreless for the next 5:01 with four turnovers.
With three starters dealing with two fouls entering the second quarter, the Lopes heavily relied on their bench unit during Baylor’s drought. Unable to find separation, graduate guard Aliyah Matharu snapped the streak with a triple, and Vonleh added five points to help the Bears take a 27-25 lead with 1:43 on the clock. Vonleh totaled 11 points on 4-for-5 shooting in the first half.
Lopes’ senior guard Anna Ostlie hoisted up a buzzer-beating 3-pointer, her only field goal in the first half, to cut Baylor’s halftime lead to 31-28.
“[Grand Canyon] had 12 early paint points against us, then I thought [we] settled into the game, settled into the environment,” Collen said. “Offensively, we were elite in the second half, but I thought it was our defense [that won us the game].”
Senior guard Jada Walker and Vonleh combined for all 22 of Baylor’s third-quarter points. A 5-0 run by Walker gave the Bears their largest lead to that point, 42-34, baiting a GCU timeout with five minutes in the third. Walker finished with 17 points, all of which came in the second half, on 7-for-9 shooting with five rebounds and four assists.
“She’s a very good point guard,” Vonleh said. “She creates for us and also knows how to create for herself. I’m proud of her for how aggressive she was in that quarter and proud of her for finding me when I was open.”
Grand Canyon senior guard Trinity San Antonio, who picked up two first-quarter fouls and sat all of the second quarter, made an enthusiastic return with 14 of her game-high 27 points coming in the third. San Antonio worked off screens and knocked down mid-range jumpers to combat the Baylor duo and keep the game within striking distance heading into the fourth, 53-47.
San Antonio moved the momentum into the fourth, opening the frame with three contested layups. Unfortunately for the Lopes, so did Walker and Vonleh, who clapped back with two layups in response.
Senior guard Yaya Felder became the third Bear to put points on the board in the second half with a free throw and layup at the 6:30 mark in the fourth. The Lopes cut the lead to as little as four before Walker and Felder added a trio of layups to give Baylor its first double-digit lead, 68-58, with 2:11 on the clock.
“Just getting together and just talking everything over [helped us overcome first-half struggles],” Felder said. ‘[We were] telling each other, ‘We’re good. We just have to calm down a little bit and let it come to us.’”
As the green and gold heated up, Grand Canyon endured a 1-for-10 shooting stretch and went without a field goal for the final 5:32. Fontleroy put the nail in the coffin with a wing triple with one minute to play, avoiding an upset and cementing a 73-60 Round of 64 victory.
“I thought one of the biggest baskets of the game was Bella’s three,” Collen said. “[The game had] been hovering at six points, five points, seven points. That was a huge three because we had turned it over a couple times in a row trying to play out of skips.”
The Bears move on to face No. 5 seed Ole Miss (21-10) at a to-be-determined time Sunday at Foster Pavilion.
