Mike Siroky’s SEC Report: Two Are Through

By Mike Siroky

The best conference in women’s basketball, the Southeastern, saw two of their three Sweet 16 teams end about as expected, against the two top seeds in the eliminations

The efforts were dramatically different. Texas A&M represented the conference and itself well. South Carolina not so much.

Both are young teams bringing back most of their talent. The one SEC All-American playing this day did herself proud.

 

 Notre Dame (33-4) 87, Texas A&M (26-7) 80

The Aggies ran into a top seed, in Chicago. 

They lost to the Irish in the exact same position last season as well. 

Anriel Howard, now at Mississippi State, said farewell with career highs of 12 field goals for 26 points with 14 rebounds.

The trip from the plains of Texas to the steel skyscrapers of the big city was exhilarating. It was about as far as a team with five sophomore starters could be expected to go.

For once, Chennedy Carter was not the only All-American on the court. 

But she did get a second foul, offensive, when it was just 7-4 and less than five minutes in. 

Replays showed a quick whistle. 

That could’ve ended  any chance. 

But no. A true leader, she scored 16 by the 42-42 half. Notre Dame had three in double figures.

She finished with 35 points. Cierra Johnson doubled, 12 each. Kayla Wells scored 15. N’dea Jones scored 11. They were outrebounded, 30-19.

“This is what women’s basketball needed.” Blair said. “You just saw six games that were all double-digit wins that were a little bit of a runaways. 

“We just played arguably maybe the best team right down to the wire. We don’t ever give up. We find ways to get the job done. It was a tremendous ball game.

“ I had to call time-out two minutes into the second half. They made a couple of good plays. We made mistakes. We had our chances.

“That’s all you can want. But folks, this is what women’s basketball needs right now. They don’t need the double-digit wins and all of that. 

“We lost the ball game probably because of the paint points that they got, whether it was posting up or their two bigs inside, and this is why they are better this year than they were last year.

“But the heck with them. I want to talk about these three (his pLayers) right here, OK?

“ I’m going to tell you one thing, all you people that are out there listening, if she doesn’t make State Farm All-American this year, something is doggone wrong. 

“Now, think about it; why does she have to wait until she becomes a junior or a senior just because there’s very quality at the top?

“And you saw one out there tonight. But if she’s earned it, and she has, and she’s done it for two straight years, this is a kid that needs to be All-American this year, and I’ll go to bat for her and what she’s doing, and I’m proud of her. This one right here, she controls the boards, controls the rebound, does a great job. She’s our captain and our leader.

“And the one down there, she doesn’t know who Jamaal Wilkes is. Maybe you young ones don’t, either. 

“But he was called "Silk" back then when he played for the Lakers, and this is our version of Jamaal Wilkes and "Silk" because she’s so smooth. She’s so smooth.

“But give credit to this team. 

“Notre Dame is probably the best team we’ve played this year, them and Mississippi State. So give them all kudos. Muffet made some great calls. Their high-low game was hurting us. That’s why they’re defending national champions.”

He said just ask his kids. Carter said it emanates from him.

“Just stay calm. My coach kept me out there. Keep my head up.” 

Blair interrupted her.

“You can give a little bit better than that. Go ahead, expound a little on that one. Come on down.”

Carter said, “I mean, it’s simple. You get two fouls early, you’re not going to complain or quit. Keep playing. Keep your head together. It’s fine. Stay within the system. Keep playing defense.

“ It’s not a big deal. Stay within the system. Keep playing defense. It’s not a big deal. My teammates believed in me. I didn’t pick up a third one after that.”

Blair again. “If it would have been any other team we were playing, she’d have been brought to the bench. I have to trust my bench. But when you’re playing Notre Dame, it could have been over in the first quarter, and she comes and sits by me, and that’s why we trust her.”

“I’m really proud of them,” Carter said. “We’re a group of sophomores going against seniors, potential draft picks. I was so proud of the way we fought tonight. We fought for four quarters  and we left it all out there on the court.

“Some of them were disappointed, but I was proud of my teammates. We competed. We’re young and we’re growing, and I just told them, hey, we’re going to be better next year. We’ll be back, and we’ll make a statement again.”

Cierra Porter said, “Their transition is very good, and also they were able to spread the floor because they can pretty much all shoot it, all the guards can pretty much shoot, so they’re able to spread the floor, break you down. 

“And then the plays they run, they run so many screens, and it’s just hard to defend. They’re a very good offensive team, and they have some good sets and some good plays that they run.”

Carterr said, “Our maturity, I would say it just came from the hard work and hard practices and just preparation. We’re a team that knows good we are and how good we can be. I feel like we stay within our system and stay together.

“These are my sisters, and we are go through everything off the court, on the court, but when it’s time to play, we lock in and we play together. And that’s where our maturity comes in, and games like this prepare us to take on better challenges. Games and coaching.”

Johnson said, “Obviously our maturity has grown over the year. Considering we had a loss to Lamar, a lot of people probably thought we couldn’t make it to the Sweet 16 let alone maybe even make the tournament.

“So I think that through each game, each game we’re continuing to play with each other more, getting a feel for the game and understanding. We’re becoming smarter, we’re becoming better and we’re getting older. We have to credit that to the coaches, as well, but also to us playing as a team and just sticking together.”

Blair said Carter’s image impacts other teams.

“I’ve seen it happen for two straight years. The last game we played last year against Notre Dame, correct me if I’m wrong, did she have 37 whacks in that game? 31. So I guess I coached her up this one.

“The ability to score off of the bounce, I mean, nobody does it better than her, OK?

“It was hard getting -- they were walling up, getting her thing, and she missed a couple of the drives, and she didn’t get any reputation calls, OK?

“That we didn’t get. We had to earn everything we got in there. And it was a well-called ball game. But she averages about nine free throws a ball game and that’s when the jump shot goes down and they’re making her shoot a 25-footer,

“I want her to drive the ball. She couldn’t drive it so much in the first half because she already had two fouls, and so sometimes she tries to make the home run call.

“But folks, there’s nobody in the game like her doing what she can. She plays the point and the two guard. How about this: She’s not even in the top 5 in the WBCA for point guards this year. She didn’t even make the list. How’s that? Unbelievable.

“But I’m proud of her. She is very good with her teammates.

“That’s the hardest thing. Last year when she was a freshman, it was hard to embrace a freshman as your best player if you had a veteran team, okay. It would have been like a stud freshman coming to Notre Dame and taking over. It was very difficult for me last year to coach that.

“But they love her now. We love her. She loves us. She’s very good.

“ This is the first team, correct me, that has shot over 50 percent on us all year. Who are you going to stop?

“But the role, the transition baskets, I think they hit four points in a row and I had to use another time-out, I thought that was the key right there. We just couldn’t stop them from scoring.”

So he let Carter loose to shoot as a shooter must shoot.

“That’s what a scorer has to do. That’s what Kobe Bryant had to do all his life. He could go 7-for-24 and the Lakers would win. Michael Jordan had a lot of those games, too. Throw the stats out the window because we were getting some of the boards and putbacks and everything what she was creating. She was triple-teamed in there a lot, as well.

“So stats, throw out the window. The ability to create your shot and put a team on your shoulders and be able to handle a miss. 

“There’s a lot of kids that can’t handle a miss. She can handle a miss as well as anybody and step back up, think about the next shot she’s going to make. 17 boards, that’s the difference in the ball game.

“But here’s another thing that you never see in a women’s basketball game: Seven turnovers for us, nine for them. That’s damned good basketball. That’s what people are going to tune in to watch in the women’s game.

“That’s what we’ve got to get to. Great games like that, was well played and well-coached, and I have a very, very good staff that was working with me, and you look down at her staff, and her staff is as veteran as ours, even probably even more veteran.

“We grew up sort of by accident when we lost our second leading scorer in Carter-Riverside game. 

“Nobody saw, and then all of a sudden we were playing Oregon State, it was played so late over in Maui, we went out there and controlled the whole game. And I looked back at my assistants and said: ‘Maybe we’re better than what we thought.’

“You lose that player and you put a junior college in, you move Chennedy to the two, who hadn’t played it in a year and a half, that’s when we grew up. We just said, what the heck. People didn’t expect much. 

“Our goal this year was to simply get to the NCAA Tournament for the 14th year in a row.

“That will not be our goal next year.

“

“We can play with the big girls. We just showed it. And Notre Dame did not play bad, they played damned good. We played almost damned good.

“Appreciate the coverage. Write, build our game up. We need y’all as much as y’all need us. And hopefully all of you are here because you want to be here.

“ You weren’t assigned to this and you had to cover it. You’re here because you want to be in the women’s game or covering it. That’s what we need. There’s a lot of great stories that are out there. Y’all have fun.”

Senior Aja Elllison, a two-year transfer from Maryland, and junior college transfer Caylinne Martin are finished.

 Expect Blair to partially restock with another JC player. He also needs bench depth. All starters return as juniors. Carter will be the conference player of the year.

Notre Dame played as close to home campus as possible, enjoying eight busloads of fans among the 7,715 there in DePaul’s Wintrust Arena.

Arike Ogunbowale, the heroine of last season’s national championship with the two game-winners at the finish,  poured in a career high 34 points on 14-of-26 shooting. 

The senior tallied 24 points in the second half, including 12 in the final quarter. 

Jessica Shepard added to her postseason double-double colkection,this time with 24 points and 14 rebounds.

 

Jackie Young just missed a double-double with 14 points and eight boards. 

She scored 10 crucial points in the fourth. 

Furthermore, Brianna Turner also was among the double-digit scorers with 12 points and four blocks.

 

"I thought Gary Blair did a phenomenal job getting his team back to the Sweet 16,” Notre Dame coach Muffet McGraw said. 

“They had a whole new team built around Carter, who is just a phenomenal player. We struggled to guard her. 

“Thought it was a really entertaining game to watch with a lot of big shots. Jessica Shepard was unstoppable down low with a double-double. Arike hit big shot, after big shot.

“ I thought the steal and the layup late in the game sealed it."

 

Baylor (34-1) 93, South Carolina (22-10) 68

Except for her own fans, Baylor coach Kim Mulkey is not easy to like.

Once dismissive  of accused football rapists on her campus, she is nonetheless a Louisiana Tech champion as a player and was on Pat Head’s 1976 Olympic team.

She has the most consistent team in America.

The Gamecocks’ wired-together No. 4 seed had no chance.  

What a bust.

 Baylor was seeded the easiest draw coming in.

 A one vs. a four is supposed to happen here. 

Baylor lost in the Sweet 16 last season. They lost, in overtime, to Mississippi State in an Elite Game the year before that. So they had been frustratingly close.

The Bears have four in double figures, led by All-American Kalani Brown.

They destroyed South Carolina in Columbia, 94-69 starting with a 32-13 first quarter, spinning SC to 4-4 at the time. 

Brown scored 22, and the other three double-figure scorers stayed on point.  Te’a Cooper led the Gamecocks with 16.

Past was prelude. Each team scored one more point.

Baylor established itself early, a 23-11 first and 25-12 second. By the time four minutes were left in the third, it was a 22-point hole. 

Te’a Cooper proved everything she was supposed to prove in her first transfer season from Tennessee. 

She has a year left. Sher had 17. 

 Mikiah Herbert Harrigan is next season’s forward leaders. 

She is the scoring forward line leader from here on out. She had 16 but had already fouled out as Dawn Staley let everyone in to the NCAA participation book, 13 deep.

Senior Bianca Cuevas-Moore needed 17 Points to reach 1,000 in her career. She got 13.

All five Baylor starters had at least 12 each.

Staley said, “Well, the rivalry is lopsided. We’re 0-2.

“Kim’s done a great job at making a huge transition, and I know she’s been doing this for a very long time, from being a great point guard to a great coach, a National Championship coach.

“We give hope to some other, current players, and other former players; that it can get done, as far as being successful in the coaching ranks, and impacting young people’s lives on a daily basis is something that I guess we have been impacted by the coaches and the mentors that have been in our lives at a young age; that it allows us to have some success, while returning a favor to some young people.

“Obviously we didn’t execute what we needed to execute, and that was because of, you know, the challenge that Baylor posed for our team. I’m proud to participate in the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament. We look forward to a brighter future.”

Jennings was disconsolate. She was the only player to comment and did not say much.

“ It was pretty difficult,” she said. “You know, we’re giving up a lot of height advantage with them, but I feel like we did the best that we could. Yeah, that’s pretty much it.”

“Their guards are solid,” Staley said. “Obviously, if given the opportunity, you know, they take advantage of the opportunities that they have. I thought we just got our defense off-balance a little bit, especially when we took some shots and it allowed some transition buckets that were uncontested.

“ Baylor has all the key ingredients to be a national champion. They have size, they have athleticism. They have an ability to beat you at a lot of difference places. You definitely have to game plan for them and you have to adjust to their style of play.

“Here’s the bottom line that we didn’t really harp on as a staff, and you don’t want to put that much pressure on your young team in that only maybe three players have experience being in the Sweet 16.

“Actually being in the Sweet 16, three or four players, and the roles that some of the ones that didn’t -- wasn’t a part of those Sweet 16s, and those Elite 8s and those Final Fours, this is their first time to ask them to perform at a high level against a National Championship contender team, you know, was a bit much. 

“But we didn’t want to mention that, but when you actually have to decompress and look at it, it’s hard for them to have to be able to do that at this level.

“I think we achieved the potential of this team. I don’t think we lacked the potential. I thought getting to the second weekend of this tournament would be, you know, a real goal for us. I didn’t say that out loud, obviously, but I thought it was a real goal, attainable goal, to reach for.

“Obviously we wanted to end it somewhere else, like Tampa, but we just didn’t have enough. When you look at, you know, what was on our roster, you look at the inexperience of players who had to make an impact for us consistently, the depth of our rosters, the injuries at the beginning of the season, it was just hard to build that chemistry.”

South Carolina advanced a game further last season before running into UConn.

Alexis Jennings also played the career-ending game. She scored five free throws, but then 22 SC points came at the line. Baylor had 20 more field goals. Maybe SC was not a true four seed.  Ty Harris comes back as point guard for one more season, her fourth as a starter.

They drew 6,544