TAMPA, Fla. — Baylor recovered after blowing a 17-point lead and losing a star participant, beating Notre Dame eighty-two-eighty-one for the NCAA women’s basketball championship Sunday night while 2018 match hero Arike Ogunbowale ignored a bad shot in the final seconds.
Chloe Jackson made a layup to put Baylor in advance with three. Nine seconds left. Notre Dame is known as the timeout and inbounded to Ogunbowale, whose buzzer-beating jumper inside the championship game lifted Notre Dame to the last 12 months title. Ogunbowale became fouled attempting for a layup, then missed the primary of two loose throws with 1. Nine seconds ultimate. She made the second. However, the Irish by no means were given the ball lower back.
The Lady Bears (37-1) won their first championship in seven years. Coach Kim Mulkey and Baylor have received titles in 2005, 2012, and 2019. The 2012 championship game also pitted the Lady Bears against Muffet McGraw’s Irish inside the lady coaches’ closing meeting for the title.
Baylor became in a position to drag off the win without big-name ahead Lauren Cox, who injured her knee late within the 1/3 zone. The Irish had rallied from a 14-factor deficit inside the 1/3 region to tie it at 78 within the fourth. Jackson then scored a jumper from the foul line, and Jessica Shepard countered with two loose throws to tie it, setting up the exciting finish.
The Lady Bears had been primed to run away with the sport as Notre Dame struggled to attain. But the Irish have a knack for massive comebacks, doing it towards UConniin this year’s semifinal and Mississippi State in the remaining year’s identify game after they rallied from 15 down inside the third zone.
Ogunbowale led the charge again, scoring 17 of her 31 points in the 2d 1/2. That covered a buzzer-beating three on the end of the third area, sparking an eleven-zero Notre Dame run.
It helped the Irish that the Lady Bears needed to play the closing 11 minutes without Cox. She was twisted up with Kalani Brown on the defensive cease and went down, clutching her left knee, with approximately a minute to move in the third region. The 6-foot-4 junior changed into crying in pain a few minutes earlier than they took her off the courtroom in a wheelchair. Her mom began tearing up in the stands, and her dad had his hands over his face.
She returned to the bench within the fourth area on crutches, with a massive brace on her left knee. She changed into the primary one to preserve the trophy after the sport.
Mulkey can have a good time with her third identity and her family nearby. Daughter Makenzie is on the coaching group of workers, and little one grandson Kannon Reid turned into sitting inside the front row at the back of the bench. As the last 2nd ticked off, she hugged her daughter and the rest of the workers’ bodies at midcourt.
Jackson was named the Final Four’s Most Outstanding Player. With the sport tied at eighty, she drove along with her right hand and hit a layup that bounced off the rim before dropping in.
