Top Takeaways: Baylor’s Role Players Struggle, TCU’s 3-Point Barrage & Updated Big 12 Race

Here are the top takeaways from No. 12 Baylor women’s basketball’s (21-5, 10-3) 83-67 loss to No. 17 TCU (22-4, 10-3) on Thursday night at Foster Pavilion.

Baylor’s Big Three Did Enough on Offense, But Role Players Struggled

At the end of the first quarter and early second quarter, Baylor had nearly an eight-minute drought without a field goal. Despite the sluggishness to start on offense, redshirt sophomore guard Taliah Scott kept the Bears afloat with 16 flashy points in the first half.

Scott was fantastic early, hunting her shot with some crazy 3-pointers. In the second half, however, the Horned Frogs did a much better job keeping her contained. Scott still finished with a team-high 22 points on 5-of-10 shooting and 9-of-11 shooting from the charity stripe; she also dished out four assists.

Senior forward Darianna Littlepage-Buggs played with a spark in the first half, scoring eight points, hauling in three rebounds and collecting three assists. Littlepage-Buggs looked poised for a big second half, but suffered an ankle injury late in the third quarter. She closed the contest with 14 points.

Sixth-year senior point guard Jana Van Gytenbeek put together a solid performance, with 14 points (4-7 3PT), six assists and four boards. Scott, Littlepage-Buggs and Van Gytenbeek combined for 50 of Baylor’s 67 points.

Outside of the big three, the Bears received virtually no scoring help from their role players. Bella Fontleroy, Yuting Deng, Kayla Nelms, Marcayla Johnson, Kiersten Johnson and Kyla Abraham combined for 15 points, half of which came in garbage-time points when the game was out of reach.

TCU’s Star Players Exploited Mismatches All Game

The Horned Frogs were looking to exploit mismatches all throughout the contest. TCU’s star senior forward, Marta Suarez, dominated whichever Bear happened to be guarding her — Littlepage-Buggs, Fontleroy, Johnson and Abraham — in the first half, dropping 15 points on 7-of-12 shooting, most of which came around the basket.

On the other end of the court, nearly every one of Baylor’s first-half turnovers (7) came in the paint, with Abraham turning the ball over twice and Fontleroy having three turnovers of her own. 

The Horned Frogs took advantage of the miscues and scored eight points off turnovers in the first half, compared to Baylor’s three, which was the biggest difference in the first half, as TCU led 36-32 at halftime.

The story of the second half wasn’t Suarez but TCU’s other star player, senior guard Olivia Miles. Head coach Nicki Collen elected to give Miles the Jada Williams treatment, where the Bears would go under almost every screen and let her take whatever shot she wanted beyond the arc.

Miles made Baylor pay time-after-time-after-time, scoring 23 of TCU’s 25 points in the third quarter on 8-of-11 shooting, seven of which came from beyond the arc. When the Bears finally switched to guarding Miles straight-up later in the quarter, she still drained three contested 3-pointers.

Suarez and Miles drilled a combined three more shots from deep in the fourth quarter. The duo finished with 67 of TCU’s 83 total points, with Miles scoring a season-high 40 and Suarez chipping in 27 of her own. The Horned Frogs finished the game with a ridiculous 51% clip (15-of-29) from beyond the arc; it was the first time this season the Bears had given up double-digit 3-pointers.

Baylor’s Big 12 Hopes Still Alive, But Hosting Look Slim

While Baylor dominated the rival Horned Frogs for over a decade, TCU has won four straight matchups over Collen and the Bears. Although Baylor still has a legitimate shot to win the Big 12 Regular-Season Championship, the Bears’ hopes of hosting an NCAA Tournament Round of 64 and eventually a Round of 32 game look a lot slimmer after tonight.

To host, Baylor will likely need to win its revenge matchup on the road in hostile Fort Worth against TCU in a couple of weeks or win the conference tournament in Kansas City. As of this moment, the Bears have just one win over a top-25 team, according to Torvik: the season-opener against Duke, which is currently No. 7 overall in Torvik and No. 11 in the AP Poll.

Baylor also has a big opportunity to win a road matchup over No. 16 Texas Tech (23-3, 10-3) next week. A victory in Lubbock would keep the Bears in the thick of things for a Big 12 Championship, along with TCU (22-4, 10-3) and No. 19 West Virginia (21-5, 11-3), but again, Baylor probably needs to add more to its resume for a legitimate chance at hosting and wins over some of the bottom-half teams in the conference — UCF, Arizona and Kansas State — won’t cut it. Prior to tonight’s loss, the Bears were a five-seed in ESPN’s latest NCAA Tournament projections.