Back to the Future: HOF Mulkey PG beats Coach Mulkey - La Tech 77, Baylor 72

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.

Pat Summitt's Vols Eliminate Griner's Baylor, 73-63

As an almost perfect rebounder, Britney Griner (1-9 offensive rebounder, 1-10 defensive rebounder) was held in check by the perfect rebounder in our Value Add Basketball Game in Chamique Holdsclaw (1-10, 1-10). 

As a result, Pat Summitt's undefeated 1998 Tennessee Vols won the battle of the boards 39-30 and pulled away from a 59-56 lead with five minutes to go to win 73-63.

Tennessee is our first Final Four team in the all-time great Women's basketball tournament, and will face UConn 2010, which barely survived 74-72 vs USC 1983.

The other Final Four game will be the winner of Notre Dame 2018 and UConn 2016 vs the winner of La Tech 1982 and Baylor 2019.

Griner is arguably the best player in the game, as an elite shot blocker and one of the few offensive players to score or draw a foul on rolls of 1-14 and only miss a shot on a 15-20. 

However, unlike the 2019 Baylor lineup where everyone was WNBA bound, point guard Odyssey Sims was the only true star in the 2012 team besides Griner, and that two on five was not enough for Baylor.

The Vols had an unlikely hero in point guard Ace Clement, who is a great shooter but rarely gets the ball to shoot. However this time Holdsclaw (14 points, 12 rebounds) grabbed several offensive rebounds and passed out to Clement who hit shots including a 3-pointer that made it 67-56 with 7 possessions (3:58) to play.

Clement scored 19 points in the game. Typically a trio of other Vols could all put up 20 in the same game - Holdsclaw, Tamika Cummings and Kelly Jolly.

Worth noting that as a freshman Griner first made her true mark by stunning a much weaker Lady Vols team with 27 points and 10 rebounds, and then dominated them again two years later in the last game coached by Summitt. However, that last team was 27-9, not 39-0 like the team in our game.