On Monday, Cal women’s basketball got blown out by #1 Baylor 102-63 in the second round of the NCAA Tournament. Juicy Landrum (20 points & 7 assists) and Chloe Jackson (18 points & 8 assists) led the way for Baylor while Kianna Smith (18 points) was the top performer for Cal. Baylor advances to the Sweet Sixteen where they will face South Carolina.
Cal got off to a strong start in this game, trailing 10-9 with 3:41 to go in the first quarter. Kianna Smith had 5 points on 2-2 shooting from the field and 1-1 shooting from 3-point range, doing a good job of keeping the Golden Bears in the game. At the end of the quarter, Baylor was able to pull ahead, leading 19-16 behind 6 points and 4 rebounds from Lauren Cox. Smith was up to 7 points while Kristine Anigwe had 5 points and 3 rebounds. Cal was down, but they were still in the game.
Unfortunately for Cal, that would be the closest they would get. Baylor would start out the second quarter on a 6-0 run, building on the 5-0 run they had to close out the first quarter. On an 11-0 run up 25-16, Baylor forced Cal to call a timeout with 8:11 to go in the half. That timeout didn’t work out too well for Cal as they went scoreless for the first 5+ minutes of the second quarter, trailing 37-18 with 2:40 to go until halftime. All things were going Baylor’s way while everything was unravelling for Cal.
During the final couple of minutes, Cal was able to score nine more points to trail 46-27 at halftime. Jackson was leading Baylor with 12 points on 6-8 shooting from the field while Smith led Cal with 9 points on 4-4 shooting from the field.
During the third quarter, it was more of the same as Baylor would lead 69-37 with 3:25 to go. Landrum was up to 18 points, 4 rebounds, and 6 assists while Smith continued to lead Cal with 12 points. It was one way traffic for Baylor who would go on to lead 79-40 with just one quarter to go.
At the end of the third quarter, Anigwe was still struggling to get into any sort of flow. She had 11 points, but it was on 3-15 shooting from the field, nowhere near the level of effectiveness that she is used to. Baylor did a really good job of defending Anigwe inside, denying entry passes and in general using their size and length to make it tough for her to score. By taking her out of the game, Baylor had removed Cal’s biggest weapon from the game. Like taking out someone’s queen in chess.
At this point, it was clear that Baylor would win and that they did, cruising to a 102-63 win. Cal was given a tough task considering the opponent and location, so in that vein it’s no surprise they lost. At the same time, Cal would have liked to have faired better than they did and not get totally blown off the court.
For Cal, this season is sort of a mixed bag. On the one hand, they made the NCAA Tournament and backed up their presence there by dominating North Carolina in the first round. On top of that, Kristine Anigwe had a season for the ages, putting herself in the conversation for nearly every award possible while smashing records along the way. On top of that, Lindsay Gottlieb got a chance to coach one of her favorite players in Receé Caldwell and the team as a whole seemed pretty unified throughout the entire season.
On the flip side, there were so many expectations coming into this season of perhaps getting a top four seed and hosting the NCAA Tournament for the first two rounds. Instead, Cal found themselves in almost the exact same situation that they’ve been in for the last couple of seasons. Reaching the tournament and winning a game only to get crushed by one of the elites.
Up next for Cal is the offseason and life without Angiwe, who has had the greatest career of anyone in the history of Cal women’s basketball and arguably Cal basketball as a whole. Losing her will be a big loss, but Cal appears to have a bright future with McKenzie Forbes and Kianna Smith as the next one-two punch. Cal also brings in a solid recruiting class that should be eager to get to work as well.
