Rouse: Baylor tops UCONN
THE BAYLOR LADY BEARS REPLACE UCONN AS NATION’S TOP TEAM. By Charles Rouse
WACO – For the first time in nearly two years, there is a new No. 1 team in women’s college basketball, and that team is the Big 12’s Baylor Lady Bears. The Connecticut Huskies, who last week suffered their first loss of the season to Stanford, and their first loss in their last 89 games, a new college basketball record, fell out of the No. 1 sport for the first time in 51 weeks.
The Lady Bears, who previously were No. 2 in both the AP and ESPN/USA Today basketball rankings, advanced to the top spot in the AP poll for the first time in the school’s history. This also is the first Baylor basketball or football team to claim a number one spot in the AP writers’ poll. The highest national ranking for the Baylor men’s basketball team was ninth this season.
The Baylor football team checked in at No. 3 for two consecutive weeks in the 1963 season.
It is not, however, the first time the Lady Bears have been ranked No. 1 in basketball. Baylor was No, 1 in the final ESPN/USA Today poll after winning the national championship in 2005. Duke, Stanford and Tennessee round out the top five in this week’s AP women’s basketball poll.
“This top ranking brings positive national recognition to our program, Baylor University and the Big 12 Conference,” head coach Kim Mulkey was quoted as saying in a news release posted on the Baylor athletic website. “We welcome that, every coach in America would, but we keep it in perspective. We want to be ranked No. 1 at the end of the season.”
The Baylor women are 13-1 on the year as they get ready for the start of the always highly competitive conference season. Their one loss was at Connecticut by one point in mid-November. Since then, the Bears, led by standout sophomore center and National Player of the Year candidate Brittney Griner and National Freshman of the Year candidate Odyssey Sims, have run off 10 straight wins, including victories over four ranked opponents (Michigan State, Notre Dame, Tennessee and Syracuse).
The 6-8 Griner is averaging 21.7 points, 7.3 rebounds and 5.1 blocks a game, and Sims is scoring at a 12.4 clip for the Lady Bears’ first through the first half of the season. Baylor is the second Big 12 women’s team to be ranked No. 1 in the AP poll. Texas was No. 1 in the AP poll for two weeks in early February in 2004.
The Texas Tech women held down the top spot for a couple of weeks at midseason in 2004 in the ESPN/USA Today rankings, but they were No. 2 both weeks in the AP poll.
Charles (Chip) F. Rouse III, the Kansas City Sports Examiner, has spent over 40 years working in and with the news media. Rouse, a journalist by training and a graduate of the University of Kansas, has served in the role of newspaper reporter; in addition to radio and television. To view Chip’s sports articles, including this one, on Examiner.com, please click here. He welcomes your comments at crouse@massappealnews.com.