Baylor victory overcomes pall from injury to Cox in NCAA women’s championship game

Perhaps the only emotion more powerful than the silent despair when Baylor’s Lauren Cox injured her knee in the third quarter of the women’s championship game was the joy when the Lady Bears survived a subsequent comeback from defending champion Notre Dame to take the title.

The Lady Bears led by 12 points early in the third when Cox, a junior, and teammate Kalani Brown got tangled up going for a rebound under the Notre Dame basket.

Several minutes later, with hardly a sound to be heard inside Amalie Arena in Tampa, Fla., Cox was wheeled off the court in a wheelchair.

Using braces, she was able to return to the bench late in the fourth quarter, as the Lady Bears held on to win 82-81, when Notre Dame’s Arike Ogunbowale missed the first of two free throws with 1.9 seconds remaining.

Time ran out on Notre Dame as Baylor inbounded the ball. Among the emotional moments immediately afterward was Brown running to the Baylor bench to embrace Cox.

“I’m one of the leaders of the team, so just to have my voice there, to tell them that I’m still OK, and they told me they were going to do this for me,” Cox told ESPN after the game.

Cox, a two-time Big 12 Defensive Player of the Year and a third-team AP All-American this year, finished with eight points, eight rebounds and three blocks in 29 minutes. Brown scored 20 points and added 13 rebounds and two blocks.

As the jubilation overcame the dark moment of the injury, Cox added another high to the experience, making it up the ladder to take her turn during the celebratory cutting down of the net.

While telling ESPN that it was too early to know much in detail about her injury, she vowed she would be ready for her senior season, saying she would “do whatever I need to do to get it better, whether that’s rehab, whatever it is, I’m going to do it.”

–Field Level Media