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Baylor Women's Basketball

Takeaways: Baylor falls to Arkansas on the road

December 6, 2020
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The Baylor Lady Bears dropped a road contest to Arkansas on Sunday evening to fall to 2-1 on the young season. Baylor drops to 60-16 vs. the Top 25 away from Waco since the 2010-11 season.

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Takeaways: Baylor falls to Arkansas on the road

4,247 Views | 4 Replies | Last: 3 yr ago by Brian Ethridge
GarlandBear84
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I'm glad you didn't sugarcoat it. I would guess if you polled the players, they would all say DiDi is their leader. She's a senior with skins on the wall and is very vocal and passionate.

Why do you think she has to earn that back after being out? She's been back for two games already.
sevenmilebeachbob
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1. I agree with almost everything that Brian said.
2. Didi actually took 3 charges, not 2. I don't recall a single other BU player taking a charge. Didi was one-on-one guarding the player who charged into her all 3 times. The great majority of charges in virtually every game come from a player sliding over as a secondary defender to take a charge -- I don't remember a time that a BU player took a secondary charge -- there darned sure weren't many. That's shocking. And coaching. And it happened against a team constantly driving to the rim.
3. It's blasphemy to criticize Mulkey's coaching, but our team looked like it had never been taught a thing about how to deal with a top of the key screen. You either hedge it hard or switch -- we did neither over and over, so the primary defender was always trailing the dribbler who took off for the basket and then made the basket or was fouled by the trailing defender, or both. Finally in the 4th quarter BU began to switch some of the time -- if you want to see what switching on screens looks like, watch the BU men's team.
4. When an Arkansas player had no screen but just took off for the basket on a drive, BU never moved over to take away her strong hand. When a right-handed player always drives right, move so far over that she just can't possibly drive right -- perhaps she can drive left, but she doesn't want to, and we never made her show that she could go left. Maybe she gets by you to the right the first couple of times, but not 10 times in a row!
5. I don't like to call out players individually by name, but 3 of our 10 who are playing now don't have enough athleticism to play Mulkey-type defense. That's simply a fact and is a reflection of our diminished recruiting. We haven't been giving important minutes to players like that since before Griner arrived at Baylor. That's why we've won 10 Big 12 titles in a row. There's actually an exception to what I said about the 3 players -- if 1 of the players would put the effort into improving her conditioning to the same incredible extent that Kalani did over her time at BU, that player has a chance to be a solid contributor later in her career.
6. I believe that everyone would agree that this year BU is not a good shooting team -- there's not one great shooter on the team. Over the years K-State and Iowa State have had some good teams who weren't athletic but could really shoot. BU right now has the bad combination of some players who aren't good shooters but also aren't athletic.
7. Since watching the Baylor - Arkansas game, I watched Texas play A&M. For a Baylor fan, it was very discouraging viewing. The teams attacked each other like packs of wild dogs -- and I mean that 100% as a compliment, as that's how good defenses play. Neither team put a player on the floor who wasn't a real athlete. In his first year, and with Covid, how in the world did Schaefer improve UT so much?
8. It's always dangerous to evaluate a team after a bad performance, but it's going to take monumental improvement for Baylor to be the Big 12 champs this year. Let's hope that improvement occurs. I wouldn't bet against Mulkey after 10 in a row, but it will take the best coaching job of her career to make this team champions.
9. As Brian said, don't blame the officiating for the Arkansas loss.
Brian Ethridge
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Staff
Great breakdown of what we all saw.

There needs to be some players looking in the mirror after this one.
Brian Ethridge
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Staff
GarlandBear84 said:

I'm glad you didn't sugarcoat it. I would guess if you polled the players, they would all say DiDi is their leader. She's a senior with skins on the wall and is very vocal and passionate.

Why do you think she has to earn that back after being out? She's been back for two games already.
Not going to sugarcoat a win or loss.

It seemed like the team is unsure of who the leader is and she was out quite some time in practice and habits form there. Without her being there...
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