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Two NCAA tournament teams from a year ago squaring off in a December Sunday matinee that lived up to all the hype.
UNLV just couldn’t put the finishing touches on a 71-64 loss to Baylor, Sunday, Dec. 8 from Waco, Texas. It’s the first loss for the program to the Bears after opening the all-time series with four straight wins.
“We came here knowing what we were walking into,” head coach Lindy La Rocque said. “Sweet Sixteen tournament team last year that returned everyone and got better with a couple of transfers. We knew that coming in here and that’s a key reason why we scheduled it frankly.”
With the uptick in non-conference competition, the Lady Rebels are now 1-3 against schools from Power conferences this season. Moreover, La Rocque is 3-10 in such situations in her relatively young coaching career.
Prior to the loss, UNLV had won four of its last five contests. Still in the early going of the new season, this year’s team sports an overall record of 6-3 as this road trip continues.
Sunday was the start of a three-game road trip that will take the Lady Rebel program to Texas first before finishing it out with two games in Illinois. Next up, the team will face DePaul Sunday, Dec. 15 with tip-off slated for noon.
With the week off, the team plans to sprinkle in some time away from the game.
”For me as a coach, I love the basketball piece,” La Rocque said. “I love just the impact and being able to have a small part of these young women’s journeys and part of that is just spending time with each other.
”I think that actually helps us on the basketball court whether that’s here having the little extra day. Or when we go to Chicago and taking them to places they’ve never been and actually letting them enjoy it, not just staying a basketball robot.”
Similar issues arose in the latest loss for UNLV after it went into halftime knotted at 37 apiece with the Sweet 16 participant from a year ago. Baylor would go on a 6-0 run just past the midway point of the third quarter which would soon spark an eventual 16-0 run.
During that stretch, the Lady Rebels went without a point for more than five minutes as it fell behind by 11 points.
“With each of these games, we treat them as opportunities,” La Rocque said. “We’re continuing to grow and get better but we still have things to clean up. It was a lot of the same scenario from the Oklahoma game where it was tied at halftime and we wanted to respond with a better second half. I thought we started out fine and it’s mainly [trying] to cut some of these runs.”
Going on runs at a timely point appeared to come often for the home team. To close the first quarter, the Bears went on a 7-0 run which included a buzzer-beater. It would be extended to a 12-0 run early in the second quarter.
It wasn’t all bad for UNLV in the first half as it responded to that 12-0 run with an 8-0 run of its own. The team’s first points of the frame didn’t come until the 4:37-mark.
Despite the loss, it was the Lady Rebels’ defense that allowed the team a chance to keep it close in the end. A 6-0 stretch late in regulation to cut the deficit to three was highlighted by the team’s defense.
Baylor went without a field goal for the final 6:25 of the contest.
“I’m really proud of our team’s response,” La Rocque said. “Against Oklahoma, we didn’t really respond. Today, we responded. We cut it to one with two minutes to play and put ourselves in a position to try to win the game.”
Senior guard Kiara Jackson led her team with 18 points on 7-of-13 from the field. She also added a game-high nine assists and seven rebounds to fill the stat sheet.
Jackson was at the helm of an offense that was forced into six turnovers in the first quarter with five of them coming on “traveling” calls. UNLV would commit just six the remainder of the game.
“Senior year as a point guard, there’s just a lot of emotional pieces to it,” La Rocque said. “Frankly, she didn’t start the year off as I think she would’ve liked to. She’s going back to just relying on who she is. Here’s a game where she was one assist and three rebounds away from a triple-double, I thought she played really hard — she played so well that they had to put their best defender on her, which is out of position.”
Sophomore forward McKinna Brackens was limited in the first half after picking up two fouls but would end the night with 10 points on 4-of-11 shooting.
Fellow sophomore Amarachi Kimpson also reached double-figures along with senior forward Alyssa Brown with 13 and 10 points respectively.
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