In the process of handing No. 10 Iowa State its first loss of the season Sunday afternoon, No. 22 Baylor and Bears coach Nicki Collen may have given the rest of the country a blueprint on how to slow down Naismith Player of the Year candidate Audi Crooks.
The game log will show that Baylor’s Taliah Scott, who scored all of her 21 points in the second half, sank a last-second jumper to power the Bears’ 72-70 upset win over the Cyclones (14-1) in Ames, Iowa, but the plan and execution regarding how to handle Crooks is what set the table for the stunning upset.
Prior to the game, Collen joked that Baylor (13-3) would need supernatural help to defend Crooks, who entered Sunday as the leading scorer in the nation at 29.4 points per game on a historic 72.5% shooting. In NCAA Division I women’s basketball history (which officially dates back to 1981-82), there have been 24 previous instances of a player averaging at least 29 points per game, per Stathead. None of them have shot above 60.1%.
Crooks has largely been unstoppable this season thanks to her rolodex of post moves, deft footwork and unique frame. She already has three 40-point outings, including a career-high 47 points against Indiana, and hasn’t shot worse than 57.1% in any game.
Early against Baylor, it was more of the same. Crooks, allowed to play one-on-one, scored Iowa State’s first nine points with ease, and had 14 points on a perfect 6-6 from the field in the first quarter. By the end of the first half, she was up to 22 points on 9 of 11, and one of those misses was a rare 3-pointer just before the halftime buzzer.
Crooks’ productive second quarter overshadowed the fact that Baylor had started to change their defensive gameplan. In the middle of the frame, there were multiple possessions where Jada Williams’ defender sank into the paint to front Crooks and prevent the Cyclones from getting her the ball.
That foreshadowed the Bears’ even more drastic approach in the fourth quarter, when they refused to let Crooks impact the game. Once again, the Bears ignored Williams (Reese Beaty briefly got the same treatment when she was in the game for Williams) so they could have two defenders sandwich Crooks in the post. While Williams is a strong playmaker — team-high 7.2 assists per game — she entered Sunday shooting just 39.7% from the field, including 26.7% from 3-point range.
“One of the guards was just sitting in front of me the whole time, and the other girl that was actually guarding me was behind me,” Crooks said. “It made it really, really hard for the guards to make post-entry passes because they were also both I think at least 6-foot with ups, so that makes it difficult to get it inside. It was a good defensive plan by Baylor.”
Even late in the fourth, the Bears were content to let Williams walk into 15-footers rather than let Crooks get involved.
Crooks went scoreless in the fourth quarter, and her two shot attempts were a rushed fadeaway the one time she got a post touch and a putback from an offensive rebound that got blocked. As a team, the Cyclones managed just 14 points on 6 of 17 from the field, as the Bears completed the comeback victory.
“Obviously made it hard to get Audi the ball,” Iowa State coach Bill Fennelly said after the game. “At the end of the day, it’s hard to beat a really good team playing two against five, and that’s basically what it came down to today,”
Crooks finished with 26 points on 11 of 20 from the field, but just four of them came in the second half. Williams, meanwhile, had 28 points on 11 of 28 shooting, including 6 of 17 from 3-point range — all of those marks were career-highs for the junior guard. Everyone other Iowa State player combined for 16 points on 5 of 23.
Throughout Crooks’ dominant start to the season, there has been plenty of chatter about why opponents have not sent more double teams her way. The obvious answer has been Iowa State’s elite 3-point shooting. The Cyclones entered Sunday shooting 38.2% from behind the arc as a team, which ranked 14th in the country, and three of their starters — Mackenzie Hare, Arianna Jackson and Addy Brown — were shooting 43.2% or better.
The Cyclones’ spacing in their four-out offense makes it difficult to properly execute a double without giving up an open shot, but it has still been surprising that opposing coaches have not attempted to take the ball out of Crooks’ hands more often.
Collen and the Bears took that idea one step further. You don’t have to worry about how to get the ball out of her hands if she never has it in the first place. Plus, by ignoring Williams and face-guarding the Cyclones’ elite 3-point threats, the Bears exerted more control over who had the ball and was forced to shoot instead of Crooks.
“We had to find a way to take Crooks away, and so we obviously made the decision to let Jada Williams shoot,” Collen said after the game. “Sometimes it looks crazy, because she obviously made some, but at the end of the day, when you look at the analytics, and Crooks shoots 70%, and Jackson and Hare shoot 50% from 3, we had to pick our poison. I thought we executed that at a high level.”
Collen’s bold and daring strategy helped her team pick up its biggest win of the season, and showed that it’s possible to slow down Crooks — even without supernatural help. Was this a one-off success that caught Iowa State off-guard, or will their upcoming opponents take a page out of Baylor’s book. And if they do, how will the Cyclones respond?
Connelly doesn’t expect to wait long to find out.
“We’ll probably see it Wednesday,” he said, when his team travels to Ohio to take on Cincinnati.
