WBB Handles Houston, 70-51

Friday, January 17

Waco, Texas

6 PM

Baylor

16-3,6-1Big 12

Houston

5-13,1-6Big 12

Houston

Baylor

WBB Handles Houston, 70-51

1/17/2025 8:15:00 PM | Women's Basketball

Box Score Game Book (PDF)

Vonleh pours in 18, Littlepage-Buggs adds 16 in victory

Jerry Hill
Baylor Bear Insider

WACO, Texas – Coming from the WNBA, Nicki Collen brought an extra emphasis on the 3-point shot when she came to Baylor almost four years ago.

But on a night when those shots just weren't falling, the Bears took it inside and fed the posts, scoring 52 points in the paint in a 70-51 victory over the Houston Cougars (5-13, 1-6) Friday night at Foster Pavilion.

"When we're not making shots, that's where we have to go," said Collen, whose team won its fifth in a row in improving to 16-3 overall and third in the Big 12 at 6-1. "We just weren't making open 3's. We had more air balls tonight than I've seen in the last two months combined."

Baylor's 1-2 inside duo of Colorado transfer Aaronette Vonleh and junior forward Darianna Littlepage-Buggs combined for 34 points and 15 rebounds and shot an efficient 62.5% (15-of-24) from the floor.

"We haven't seen zone in a while," Collen said, "but you can still play through the paint against the zone. . . . I think it should be what we do, anyway. With Nettie, with the way Buggs can score around the rim, with the way we can put downhill pressure with Jada (Walker) and Sarah (Andrews) and Aliyah (Matharu) and Yaya (Felder), we need to get a piece of the paint."

Limited to cheering from the sidelines in Tuesday's 70-61 win over 23^rd-ranked Utah, while serving a one-game suspension for a fighting technical, Littlepage-Buggs seemed to be on a mission. She scored 10 of her 16 points in the first half, hitting 5-of-9, to help stake the Bears to a 34-23 halftime lead.

"I'm always motivated," she said. I never want to not be on the court with my teammates. But they handled business without me, and I was on the sidelines cheering them on."

Even when they weren't falling, the Bears kept firing them from distance, missing 12 of their first 13 from outside the arc. They made their second-fewest 3-pointers of the season and shot their worst percentage at 14.3% (3-of-21).

But they showed that they're far from a one-trick pony. Baylor dominated the boards, 51-31, scored 13 second-chance points and outscored the Cougars, 52-16, on points in the paint.

"That's been a big emphasis recently, just to play through the paint from all positions," said Vonleh, who had a game-high 18 points on 7-of-10 shooting from the floor while adding nine boards. "I think that's when we get our best results. So, just focusing on that. I feel like we've been doing a good job with that recently. We just have to keep playing through the paint."

With Vonleh and 6-3 junior Kyla Abraham both picking up two first-quarter fouls, it gave 6-1 freshman Kayla Nelms a chance to shine. In the second quarter, she was 3-for-3 from the field and scored six points with three rebounds and a block in six minutes off the bench.

"The speed of the game is starting to slow down a little bit for her," Collen said of Nelms, who also played significant minutes in the win over Utah. "I think the last game, being ready and getting opportunity, really helped her today. . . . She's just making simple plays on offense . . . or highlight plays. I just thought she was really patient on her catches.:

Closing the first quarter on a 9-0 run to take the lead for good, Baylor went up by as many as 15 before going into the break with a double-digit lead, 34-23.

To their credit, though, the Cougars didn't go away quietly. They reeled off seven unanswered points and pulled within 36-30 on a 3-pointer by Laila Blair, who scored 11 points and came within one trey of tying the school record, hitting 3-of-10 from outside the arc.

Going back to their bread-and-butter, the Bears got six points from Vonleh in an 8-0 run that stretched the lead back to double digits, and Houston never really threatened again.

"Baylor came to play at a championship level," said Houston coach Ronald Hughey, whose team was coming off a 79-76 upset win over 24^th-ranked Oklahoma State. "Like I told our kids, we snuck up on Oklahoma State. But we weren't going to sneak up on these kids. They were ready to play."

Baylor's only other double-digit scorer was Florida transfer Aliyah Matharu, who scored seven of her 10 points in the fourth quarter, adding four rebounds, one block and a steal in 16 minutes.

Gia Cooke and Eylia Love led Houston with 17 and 12 points, respectively. Peyton McFarland, the Cougars' 6-4 center, finished with just five points and four rebounds with two turnovers in 29 minutes.

Baylor goes back on the road to face top-ranked UCLA (17-0) in the inaugural Coretta Scott King Classic at 2 p.m. CT Monday at the Prudential Center in Newark, N.J. With both games being televised by FOX, the Baylor-UCLA matchup will precede a top-10 showdown between seventh-ranked Texas (17-2) and No. 8 Maryland (16-1) at 4:30 p.m. at the same venue.