NCAAW Elite Eight: Baylor 51, Duke 48 (Or, The Agony And The Agony)

No one on Baylor or Duke’s women’s basketball teams can shoot a successful field goal. (This is a slight exaggeration.) No one on Baylor or Duke’s women’s basketball teams can shoot a successful three-pointer. (This is not an exaggeration, at all. Respective percentages here read 17% and 18%, with San Antonio on the line.)

By the end of this one, even the announcers sounded exasperated at all the unnecessary, forced, and otherwise ill-advised shot-taking going on in Memphis, but a trip to the Final Four is a trip to the Final Four, and if you’re shooting 34% from the field (BAYLOR.) it’s all right as long as the other team’s stat sheet reads 23%. (It took six minutes for Duke to make its first FG. Six. Baylor didn’t make a three-point shot until seven minutes into the second half.) The good news, if there’s any to be had, is that all comers were knocking down free throws like they were playing on Fisher-Price hoops.

Baylor had trouble with Duke’s zone play all night, and She-Devil Karima Christmas notched a double-double with 10 points and 12 rebounds. Jasmine Thomas added 16 points of her own, and for most of the second half Duke seemed content to sit on a four-to-seven point lead, abscond with loose balls (Joy Cheek had four steals) and get chippy with Brittney Griner. A Melissa Jones steal just before the two-minute mark made things interesting, however, cutting the Blue Devils’ lead to a mere point. Griner got the go-ahead bucket with 44 seconds on the clock, and ensuing free throws extended the Lady Bears’ lead to 51-48.

What followed was embarrassingly emblematic of what had transpired all night: a missed Duke three-shot, a weird possession arrow dilemma with 11.5 seconds remaining (almost like the officiating crew recognized that no one on this court deserved a Final Four berth), and ... another missed three to leave the final score where it was. Griner finished a block away from a triple-double, with 15 points and 11 rebounds, managed not to officially punch anyone (her one “accidental” thrown elbow was positively artful) and set the record for most blocks in NCAA tournament history with at least one game still ahead of her.

So the She-Bears survive and advance, and despite all the bad basketball tonight this is empirically a good thing, because Baylor coach Kim Mulkey, if you’ve never seen her, is like an angry golden poodle that wandered out of a Dallas galleria or off the set of “Justified,” a helmet-haired fireplug of a woman who may be a legitimate, actual crazy person. This makes her excellent television, and her continued success should be applauded accordingly. Just as long as she tells her girls to keep drawing fouls, they should be just fine.