The reason we lost is the same reason we lost every March for last 6 years. Talented team shots 3s always will beat us in a big game on road or netural, which is NCAA. Today we actually shot 7 3s, high for us, made 3. Stanford makes 13, beats us by 5. Do the math.

Same story every March. We overwhelm less talented teams, see Big 12, will get beat in the end of the year by talented teams who can shoot the 3.

Either KM can't see this or doesn't care. Both are concerning.

I was at the game and at the risk of oversimplification, in the era of three point shooting, a good three point shooting team, everything else being reasonably equal, will beat a good two point shooting team. Stanford averages making 11 three point shots a game, and that is a lot to overcome, particularly when playing them out there on their own floor.

That being said, the key for Stanford in this game was their defense. They could match up with Baylor's post players in size, and they doubled up on them in almost every possession in the first half and much of the second. Baylor responded by continuing to challenge that alignment, and both Cox and Brown had shots blocked, Brown two or three of them. Stanford challenged every drive to the basket, and when they fouled, they did so physically.
The fact is, they intimidated the Lady Bears throughout the first half.

We took one three point shot, a successful one by DeCosta, in the first half. Jackson was out of rhythm on her shot the first half, and tried to drive to the basket, where she succeeded in going to the foul line two or three times, but her specialization is that feathery midrange shot and she was not hitting it until the second half. There were times when we really did not have our three point shooters on the floor, and while Ursin made a nice midrange shot or two, she never put a three pointer up, something with her quickness she should be able to do.

Landrum is far too passive for someone with such a good outside shot and good athleticism. If she is not wide open she will not take it, whereas the Stanford players know that it is a requirement of their offensive scheme and they will take it unless a player is right in their face. They have the ability to create space when space is needed, and the confidence to continue to shoot through multiple misses. I think that Baylor was misled when the Cardinal missed a number of open three point shots early, but they continued to put it up and the shots started dropping, as their statistical profile indicates they would.

Stanford is not as athletic, nor as deep in talent as Baylor is, but they have very skilled players and they are fundamentally sound. Baylor played its youngsters a lot, and quite frankly, they were not ready for a team with the skill and experience of Stanford. That being said, NaLyssa Smith has to be on the floor for this team going forward, whether as a starter or getting major minutes as a substitute. She and Chloe Jackson carried us in the second half, and both showed courage and persistence in their assignments.

We were without much in the way of transition opportunities in the first half, and blew two or three of the ones that presented themselves. The second half started out the same way, half court sets and slow walking the ball up the floor, but when we started our comeback in the fourth quarter, pressure defense enabled us to get turnovers and get into the open court and both Smith and Jackson took it from there. Unfortunately, we dug ourselves too deep a hole in the first half, and Stanford answered with a couple of timely threes and a drive or two by Alanna Smith, an Aussie if I recall correctly, who we had no answer for all game. She was far and away the best player on the floor, another of those mobile, skilled 6'4"ish players who have plagued us in the past, too big for our smaller players, too skilled and mobile for our bigger ones, good both inside and out.

This was a great learning experience, if a somewhat expensive one, for our team, and if I may say so, for our coaching staff, as well. We will just have to wait and see if we stay with our current, deeply rooted system or if we adapt. Stanford had far more movement than we did, and a clear understanding of their schemes at both ends of the floor, whereas we looked slow and uncertain all too often. Our lack of a pure point guard was very evident today but I will not dwell on that. What we have to decide is what kind of team we wish to be, and whether or not we can become that team at this juncture. The loss today was no accident; we were outplayed for all but about ten minutes of that game, and by the mid-second quarter the outcome was not much in doubt.

Had the game been in Waco, the outcome might have been different, but on a neutral court, I still think that we would have been in big trouble. We have talent, but all of the pieces do not seem to fit together quite yet. I look forward to the next three or four weeks, as much to see if the coaching staff saw what I saw, and if so, did they reach similar conclusions.

Excellent analysis by Setshot. UConn game will tell us if this team, players and coaches, learned anything. Honestly, I don't expect a defensive adjustment based on the past 18 years.

1st StatMan post during the 2018-2019 Baylor Lady Bears Basketball Season. 19% team shooting in the 1st half, and 55% in the 2nd half. After the ugly 2nd Quarter when Baylor was a hideous 2-of-20 shooting, including 1-of their last 15 shots before halftime, I really thought Baylor needed to cut the deficit to 6-8 points by the start of the 4th Quarter. It didn't happen, but they did make it a 2 possession basketball game. Ten more made 3-point baskets by Stanford than Baylor ultimately was the difference.

The great Statman has returned to us, and is most welcome. You have been sorely missed.

It is difficult to stop three point shooters for extended periods of time if there are multiple shooters on the floor. It goes against the accepted wisdom, that teams that live by the three die by the three. That is certainly true for teams who are not balanced, capable of scoring elsewhere on the floor, and especially for teams that do not have complementary defensive capabilities.

Individually, it is a difficult assignment to stay in the hip pocket of a player for thirty or forty minutes. The tendency is to coast a little, and to help out just a little, and Baylor has been guilty of that in the games that they have lost against hot shooting three point teams. It is also true that our defensive style does not utilize double teams very much unless we are in a pressing defense, and taking the ball out of the hands of a hot shooter requires double teaming and help on penetration, particularly when screens or crossing patterns are being used to create open shots for them.

Our second unit is talented and athletic, but raw and not yet ready for prime time. For example, Aquira DeCosta was assigned to guard Alanna Smith in the late stages of the game, and that is putting a frosh player who played nothing but zone and zone press in high school on the best player on the court. She is athletic enough to play against a player of that caliber, but not experienced enough to do it, and at a critical time she was not out on her and Smith hit a critical three pointer that stymied our comeback. There is no blame to assign to this, Stanford made the play at a critical juncture and if Smith had missed the shot we would have been off and running.

Another example: Stanford's 6'7" girl, Coffee, played out on the perimeter at the offensive end almost all the time that she was in the game. I watched her in warmup shootaround and I did not see her make a shot. In the game, however, she hit either three or four threes, and I don't recall her missing but one. I would bet that on most days she shoots less than thirty percent out there.

Louisville and Mississippi State hit far beyond their norm against us, Stanford hit at just about its norm, but even though we had the data on them, we were not ready for that. Until we learn that three point shooting teams are threats and practice against lesser teams ( we will see them in conference play, particularly against Iowa State ) so that we know how to defend the perimeter better, we will be in real jeopardy against the better teams we will see in the NCAA Tournament.

Someone suggested in the early season games that we should be using those games to polish our three point attack for more challenging games up ahead, a proposal with which I heartily agreed at the time. But equally, we should use games against lesser teams to work on the things that better teams will attempt to use agains us, and in most cases that is a lot of three point shooting so that they can avoid our size in the paint. Teams have found ways to defend our double post attack if they have some size, and they do it by preventing the ball from coming into the post at a location suitable for our under-the-basket attack, and doubling every time it does manage to get to either Cox or Brown, even away from the deep paint.

Most teams do not have the size to do that, or the depth, but Stanford and other teams we will face later do, and everyone knows exactly how Baylor attacks at the offensive end. They do not fear our perimeter game because they know we are not committed to it. You cannot have a good three point attack without making a commitment to it, and shooters who fear being taken out if they shoot from the perimeter without immediate success will not keep shooting, and will hesitate to do so just long enough to give the defender time to close on them.

It is not a simple thing to shoot with confidence from distance, and it is something that must be practiced repetitively like any other skill. I know that Mulkey does not consciously discourage three point shooting, quite the contrary, but she prefers to pound it into the paint, and for her players to penetrate and go to the rim. It is difficult for players sometimes to differentiate one thing from another, and Mulkey has been known to have a quick hook.

I do not think that it is a quirk of the recruiting process that we have had so few accomplished three point shooters at Baylor over the years, because many of them are not particularly athletic nor outstanding at the defensive end. I give you Emily Niemann as a prime example of that, and all she did was to play a huge role, perhaps a defining role, in our first national championship. We have not seen her like since, but then there are not many like her in the women's game, then or now.