WACO, TX — Five Baylor Lady Bears and head coach Kim Mulkey earned postseason honors from the Big 12, the league announced Wednesday. Mulkey earned her seventh Big 12 Coach of the Year honor while junior Lauren Cox was named the Big 12 Defensive Player of the Year for the second-straight season.
Baylor finished the regular season at 28-1 overall and ran the table in league play for the fourth time in school history with an 18-0 mark. The Lady Bears are ranked No. 1 in both the Associated Press and WBCA/USA Today polls and enter this weekend’s Phillips 66 Big 12 Women’s Basketball Championship as the No. 1 seed.
Senior center Kalani Brown and Cox were each named to the All-Big 12 First Team. For Brown, it was her third selection to the first team in as many seasons. She averaged 15.4 points, 8.1 rebounds and 1.6 blocks in the regular season in just 26.3 minutes of play. In addition, she led the Big 12 in field goal percentage at .621 and shoots a team-best 80.8 percent from the free-throw line.
Cox is a first-teamer for the second time go along with her Defensive Player of the Year award. She averaged 12.4 points, 8.9 rebounds, 2.5 blocks and 3.4 assists during the season. She shot 52 percent from the floor and thru games played March 5, she ranks 24th in the nation in assists-to-turnover ratio at 2.50:1.
Graduate transfer Chloe Jackson and junior Juicy Landrum each garnered All-Big 12 Second Team honors. Jackson averaged 11.2 points per game in the regular season while ranking second in the Big 12 in assists per game at 5.7. Landrum averaged a career-best 11.4 points per game, led Baylor with 50 3-point field goals made (.407 pct.) and is third on the team averaging 3.8 assists per game.
DiDi Richards joined Brown and Cox on the Big 12 All-Defensive team, which marks the first time in league history that three players from the same school have been on the team since the Big 12 began the award in 2006.
Richards finished with 35 steals on the season and has been tasked with the top perimeter player all season long on defense, helping the Lady Bears rank first in the nation in field goal percentage defense for the third-straight year.
Mulkey continues her dominance in the Big 12, especially since the 2010-11 season where the Lady Bears are 153-7 in league play and 303-23 overall. Baylor has the second-best winning percentage in the NCAA the past nine seasons at .929 under Mulkey’s direction. She picked up career win No. 550 this season and led Baylor to its 10th regular-season Big 12 title and ninth consecutive.
