Eleven days after the Utah women’s basketball team recorded its biggest win of the season, it welcomed another Top 20 team to the Huntsman Center. This time, however, the outcome wasn’t nearly as thrilling.
Taliah Scott scored 14 points and the 18th-ranked Baylor Bears held Utah to 26 percent shooting and downed the Utes 61-45 Wednesday night in front of 2,862 fans.
After an exciting, dynamic first quarter, the game changed and the Utes were unable to put the ball in the basket. The usually offensive-minded Utes were held below 50 points for the third time this season — all against nationally ranked teams.
Utah was led by Chyra Evans and Lani White, who had 14 points each. The Utes, however, made just 3-25 (12 percent) shots from three-point range.
“They came in and defended us like crazy. We got some open looks,” said Utah coach Gavin Petersen. “If you asked us before the game that we would get 25 looks (from three-point range), I’d say did we get 10 of them? Nine of them?
“We’re probably going to get those kinds of looks in the future and we’ve got to make them,” he added. “We don’t have any time to feel sorry for ourselves. This (Baylor) is a team that’s known for their tradition in women’s basketball and they are where we want to get to.”
Baylor improved to 16-3 overall and 5-1 in Big 12 Conference play. The Bears were predicted to finish third in the league standings and this win moved them into a tie for second place going into Saturday’s 3 p.m. game at BYU. Utah fell to 13-5 overall and 4-2 in league and travel to cellar-dweller Houston that day.
The Bears and Utes played at a quick pace in the first quarter, but Scott and Jana Van Gytenbeek led a 10-0 scoring run late in the second quarter to create a 35-24 halftime lead. Utah was unable to find its shooting stroke and couldn’t make a run.
“Ultimately, our length bothers teams when you’re not giving them the three (pointer), and the one thing I’m super proud of is we didn’t give up a lot of back-cut layups,” said Baylor coach Nicki Collen. “The number of times they moved the ball side to side, the number of opportunities to cut and the number of times we didn’t give up layups was pretty impressive.”
This was a forgettable night for the Utes, who seemed to have built momentum after dealing TCU its first loss 87-77 at the Huntsman Center on Jan. 3 and followed it with consecutive road wins over Kansas and Kansas State. Baylor, however, has also had good luck on the road and stayed undefeated (4-0) against the Utes in the series.
“Their physicality and length stressed us,” said Evans, who also led the Utes with 11 rebounds. “It disrupted us and we panicked and tried to put up quick shots.”
That was particularly evident with the Utes’ top scorers — Lani White, Maty Wilke and Reese Ross. White had nine points in the first quarter but ended up making just 4 of 15 shots. Wilke had five points (all in the second half) and Ross finished 0-7 from the field, and had several shots swatted away by Baylor defenders.
Ross, however, used her gifted rebounding ability to grab eight boards and Utah claimed a 45-41 advantage in that department. The shooting difference, though, proved too much to overcome.
