Score one for youth! In a Value Add Basketball Game featured a 19 year old guard defeating herself as a 56 year old coach.
Coach Kim Mulkey led her 2019 Baylor to a dominant all-time Elite 8 all-time performance until their were three minutes to play. However, a 37 year old younger Hall of Fame Point Guard came up with a steal and bucket to finally give 1982 Louisiana Tech a 64-62 lead with 2:44 (5 possessions) to play.
Angela Turner then made it two straight steals and fast break buckets to give Louisiana Tech a 66-62 lead and they continued to drive to the hoop and draw fouls to hold onto a 77-72 win. La Tech advances to the all-time Final Four to face the winner of Notre Dame vs UConn 2016.
The fun thing about how this played out is there will be one team from each of the past four decades in the all-time Final 4. La Tech from the 80s, Tennessee from the 90s, UConn from the first decade of the 21st century and the winner of the last Elite 8 game from the last decade.
Baylor's Lauren Cox (game high 23 points) dominated much of the game as Baylor did not let La Tech get the ball inside to Pam Kelly.
However after trailing 60-56 with just over four minutes to play, Turner, Janice Lawrence and Angela Turner continued.to drive and draw fouls. DiDi Richards and Chloe Jackson fouled out and Kalani Brown hung in with four fouls as Baylor committed 22 fouls to only 14 for the first national champions. While we do not keep track of missed shots or free throws, we count 17 made free throws for the Louisiana Tech starters alone - the highest we ever recall in a men's or women's game (remember we only play the final 44 possessions of games, assuming a 20-20 tie with all 10 players on each team having two points during the first 22 possessions).
Some believe the first official NCAA champs may have been the best ever, though the Baylor 2019 team had six future WNBA players.
Time to play the game from first roll was 33 minutes.
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