DENVER — One victory away from an undefeated season.
Brittney Griner was almost double-teamed, scoring only one basket in the second half Sunday night. So the Baylor supporting cast jumped in and carried the unbeaten Lady Bears to the national championship game.
Griner finished with 13 points and nine rebounds as Baylor claimed a 59-47 victory over Stanford and into the women’s NCAA final against Notre Dame.
“We’re not the Brittney Griner show,” Baylor Coach Kim Mulkey said. “Brittney Griner is the face of women’s basketball, and she deserves to be, but this team is bigger than Brittney. She will tell you that. Brittney Griner double- and triple-teamed allows other players on her team to have opportunities.”
Baylor (39-0) is one victory from becoming the seventh women’s team to finish undefeated and has a chance at being the first team in NCAA history to win 40 games in a season.
The top-seeded Lady Bears will face another No. 1 seed and a familiar foe Tuesday night for the title. The Irish beat Connecticut 83-75 in overtime in the first semifinal.
Baylor and Notre Dame met in the preseason WNIT final, with the Lady Bears winning in Waco, Texas, 94-81 on Nov. 17.
“It’s going to be a good game,” Griner said. “We beat them earlier in the season, but we’ve got to erase that. This is the game everybody wants.”
Stanford (35-2) fell short in the Final Four for the fifth consecutive season, ending its school-record 32-game winning streak.
The Cardinal refused to let the 6-8 Griner beat them, guarding her in the paint. The strategy worked for the first 20 minutes before the other Lady Bears started making shots.
Trailing 31-29 early in the second half, the Lady Bears went on an 11-1 run led by Jordan Madden. The junior guard had a three-point play and then a layup that made it 40-32. Griner followed with her only basket of the half, hitting a tough baseline turnaround that capped the burst.
Nnemkadi Ogwumike led the Cardinal with 22 points and nine rebounds. Stanford Coach Tara VanDerveer took her out with about 30 seconds left and gave her an embrace.
Sports, Pages 18 on 04/02/2012