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February 2006
Young, Augustus or who?
Not surprisingly, Sophia Young was one of 30 players named as a midseason candidate for the Naismith Trophy. Presented by the Atlanta Tipoff Club, the Naismith is one of two major awards given to the national player of the year. Young was previously named as one of 20 midseason candidates for the Wooden Award. The 6-1 senior forward is averaging 21.1 points, 9.8 rebounds, 2.2 steals and 2.1 assists per game. The predictable Naismith list includes Seimone Augustus and Sylvia Fowles of LSU, Ivory Latta of North Carolina, Duke’s Monique Currie, Ohio State’s Jessica Davenport and Tasha Humphrey of Georgia. The only other Big 12 players are Erin Grant of Texas Tech, Tiffany Jackson of Texas and freshman Courtney Paris of Oklahoma.
Putting your Baylor bias aside, who would you pick as the national player of the year?
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Like winning the lottery
Considering they had not exactly set the world on fire with their free-throw shooting, I knew the odds of the Lady Bears going a perfect 20-of-20 from the line in Sunday’s 73-60 win over Texas Tech had to be astronomical. Dr. Alan Reifman, who teaches statistics at Tech, actually put pencil to pad and came up with a number. With Baylor shooting 69.3 percent coming into the game, he said the odds of making all 20 free throws was less than 1-in-1,000. Compute it out, and it’s exactly .0007. It’s like finding a needle in a haystack when you’re blind-folded.
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No longer freshmen
I know it’s a coaching cliche. But by this time in the season, freshmen are no longer freshmen. And Rachel Allison and Jessica Morrow showed it Sunday in the Lady Bears’ 73-60 win over Texas Tech. With starter Abiola Wabara in early foul trouble, Allison came off the bench to hit 8-of-9 from the field and finish with a career-high 16 points. Morrow also came up big, scoring seven of her career-high 15 points in the last six minutes. With Chameka Scott and Angela Tisdale going a combined 0-of-7 on three-pointers, Morrow’s 3-for-4 performance from beyond the arc was huge. If Baylor makes another run in the NCAA Tournament — and the potential is there — it won’t be solely on the shoulders of Sophia Young. The key will be what they get from the other players and, in particular, the freshmen.
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Power of the press
Even more than referees, sportswriters don’t like to be part of the game (Well, most of us, anyway). But Robert Cessna, a buddy of mine who writes for the Bryan/College Station Eagle, was used as motivation for the Lady Bears’ 84-59 over A&M on Wednesday. When asked what she said to prepare her team for the expected environment created by $1 tickets, hot dogs and drinks, Baylor coach Kim Mulkey-Robertson said: “Honestly, I didn’t have to say a lot. I just read them your article. You pretty much summed it up.” In his Tuesday column, Cessna wrote: “(A&M coach Gary Blair) wants Aggie fans to save room in case there’s dessert — honey stolen from a Bear.” The Aggies drew a school-record crowd of 11,088 — nearly double the previous high of 5,565 (set two years ago when they gave tickets away for the Baylor game) — but they lost their 26th in a row against top-25 teams.
