By Dylan Fink | Sports Writer
For over a decade, Baylor was the standard for women’s basketball in the Big 12. Under current LSU head coach Kim Mulkey, the Bears won every regular season conference titles from 2011 to 2021.
Since Mulkey’s 2021 departure, Baylor has hoisted just one conference championship and hasn’t made it past the Sweet 16 in the NCAA Tournament. The first five years of head coach Nicki Collen’s tenure have seen continued winning, but a lack of dominance has left Baylor fans with questions about the path of the program.
“I am thrilled to be the head coach at Baylor University,” Collen said in her opening press conference in 2021. “I believe it is the top job in the country for women’s basketball. The success of this program speaks for itself, and I will begin working to ensure Baylor women’s basketball continues to be a program that excels at the highest levels.”
Since Collen took the job, the porgram’s success has not quite continued as it was. National pundits have not been afraid to criticize Collen’s continuation of the program.
A 2024 Washington Post feature on Mulkey called Baylor “no longer among the sport’s upper tier, making it another structure abandoned and left to wither.”
Collen has wasted no time in staring down public criticism and addressing the opinion that Baylor’s time of dominance has come to an end.
“I’m not afraid to say I was really, really offended by the article that came out,” Collen said following a 74-70 Sweet 16 loss to USC later that season. “And I didn’t read any of it … Don’t know what happened. Didn’t read the article. But nothing is withering in Waco … And we’re going to do it our way. And it’s going to be just as good.”
Two years later, the promise of being just as good has yet to be fulfilled. The credit of the fall from dominance, though, has less to do with the former WNBA Coach of the Year and more with massive changes to the landscape of college basketball.
Throughout the 2010s, three schools were seen as being a step above the rest of the nation: UConn, Baylor and Tennessee. The three programs accounted for 15 NCAA championships across two decades from 2000-2020.
Since the beginning of the NIL era, everything has changed.
Women’s basketball has become more popular in the public eye, seeing an 89% increase in viewership since 2024, according to Forbes. As the ceiling for talent increases, players are no longer choosing schools based off reputation.
With financial gain and a more even playing field in the picture, recruiting has become increasingly difficult for a program like Baylor, which isn’t in the top three of NIL spending in their conference.
“There’s more balance in the sport now,” Collen said in January. “Not everyone can be paid top dollar at the same five schools. More parity now exists because of where players are choosing to go.”
The Bears lost their second straight Big 12 title to TCU this season. These are the only two conference championships the Horned Frogs have ever achieved. The Fort Worth program has become a walking example of how the field of the sport is currently changing.
While Baylor is not looking down the barrel of “withering away,” Collen has a large task ahead of her to prove the dominance she claims still exists in Waco.
With three key rotation pieces in Darianna Littlepage-Buggs, Bella Fontleroy and Jana Van Gytenbeek all facing the end of their college careers, the upcoming NCAA Tournament becomes the perfect stage for the Bears to prove their worth.
“I’m not really focused on the positives right now, but by 10 a.m. tomorrow I’ll have moved on because my team needs me to move on,” Collen said following a 62-53 loss to Colorado in the Big 12 Tournament. “If this doesn’t wake them up, it’s going to be a real short trip in the NCAA Tournament for us. We have to be tougher, we have to be more connected, execute better — we need each other. We have to stop talking and start doing.”
If the Bears can’t find a way to “start doing” in the current women’s basketball landscape, then “withering away” from its former dominance may be what awaits the program on the horizon.
