By Brice Cherry

Tribune-Herald staff writer

When you’re running and gunning, you’re going to leave a few victims riddled with bullet holes.

Triggering their fast break from the get-go, the No. 6 Baylor Lady Bears zipped past Texas Tech, 83-53, Wednesday night at the Ferrell Center in a game Tech coach Kristy Curry likened to a “drive-by shooting.”

Baylor darted to three breakaway baskets in a 12-2 game-opening run, and never decelerated.

SLIDE SHOW

Lady Bears roll

Baylor's star ladies smacked down Texas Tech last night in Waco.

“I thought transition set the tone with Kelli (Griffin) pushing the ball up the floor,” Baylor coach Kim Mulkey said. “We would get a rebound, a turnover, and we were gone. We were getting to a lot of loose balls in the paint, helping our post players, and we just took off.”

Mulkey said she challenged Griffin following BU’s 66-58 loss to No. 2 Oklahoma last Saturday, and loved how her sophomore point guard responded. Griffin finished with a career-high eight assists and five steals.

“We just basically laid it out to her, ‘I’m tired of getting aggravated with you, and having to bring you off the floor for a quick turnover or not doing something,’” Mulkey said. “You can’t play at the level we want to play at without having a quarterback that runs the show. And I thought the whole play of Kelli Griffin tonight dictated the flow of everybody.”

Tech, which shot 27.5 percent, struggled to find much offense outside of freshman post Kierra Mallard, who banged her way to 18 points. But Mallard’s buckets weren’t enough to quell BU’s onslaught, as Baylor (22-4, 10-3 Big 12) led 23-7 by the 11:40 mark of the first half.

BU junior Danielle Wilson recorded a special milestone with 13:20 to go when she snatched an offensive rebound and stuck in a putback while drawing a foul. That gave Wilson 1,001 career points — making her the third BU player, after Jessica Morrow and Rachel Allison, to join that club. Wilson tallied 13 points and 13 rebounds for her 16th double-double of the season.

“Anytime a player reaches 1,000 points, that’s a special milestone,” said Wilson, who was honored . “But it’s one game, and you’ve got to continue playing.”

After trailing by 20 at the half, the Lady Raiders (15-12, 5-8) sliced BU’s lead to 15 six minutes into the second half, capitalizing on a slight lull on offense by Baylor. But then Jhasmin Player swooped in to swat Mallard’s shot, grabbed the ball, whirled around a defender, raced downcourt, pump-faked a pass, then dropped in a layup to light a fire into the crowd — and her team.

Player’s bucket sparked a 16-4 Baylor run in which she scored 14 points, including a pair of treys.

“That was intense, an extremely intense situation we were in,” said Player, who finished with a team-high 18 points to go with three assists and four steals. “I got a couple of calls for me, and I just read them correctly, that’s all it was. You have a whole defense going at Danielle for 40 minutes, so somebody has to pick up the slack. ... It was nothing I did.”

By the end of BU’s surge, the Lady Bears led 72-45, allowing Mulkey to substitute liberally in the waning minutes.

In addition to Wilson and Player, three other Lady Bears scored in double figures. Morghan Medlock and Melissa Jones dropped in 12 and 10, respectively, off the bench, while Jessica Morrow hit for 11.

The Lady Bears stifled Tech guard Maria Moore at every turn, holding her to just five points after the senior ripped the nets for 22 in the teams’ first meeting.

For Baylor, it was just a feel-good kind of night.

“Sometimes after tough losses ... you can go in the tank a little bit,” Mulkey said. “This team responded. But I didn’t expect them to tank it. I expected them to have a little bit of fight in them, like I want to get back on that floor and play again. And they did.”

The Lady Bears will hit the road for their next game, playing Texas in Austin on Saturday.

BEAR FACTS: The only other time in Baylor history three players have surpassed the 1,000-point plateau in the same season came in 1982, when Debbie Polk, Gaye Pack and Jackie Valentine accomplished it.