Cowgirl Basketball: OSU Sweeps Baylor for First Time since 2008

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STILLWATER — In her first season in Stillwater, Jacie Hoyt has done something that had happened only twice in Oklahoma State women’s basketball history: sweep Baylor.

Oklahoma State beat the Bears 77-56 on Saturday in Gallagher-Iba Arena. It marks the first time since the 2007-08 season the Cowgirls have done the double over the Bears. These teams started playing basketball during the 1973-74 season and with her two wins, Hoyt is responsible for 15% of the Cowgirls’ wins in the series.

“It means that we’re all doing what we said we wanted to do and that is build a foundation and raise the standard for Cowgirl Basketball,” Hoyt said. “That’s happening right now. You can see it in a lot of ways, this being one of them.

“I’ll tell you the fun part about it, though: that’s not what we’re focused on. It truly is us vs. us. We’ve had that mantra since the beginning. Those things are all really great to say, and of course it’s fun to win a sweep a team like Baylor. But that’s not our focus. That’s just something that we get to enjoy on the side. It’s just the buy-in right now from this group that’s making all that stuff possible for us.”

It was done with some foreign flavor. Anna Gret Asi (Estonia), Naomi Alnatas (French Guiana) and Lior Garzon (Israel) helped lead the way for OSU.

Asi and Garzon torched the Bears from 3-point range, combining to go 8-for-18.

Asi, an Arizona transfer, finished the game with 15 points, tied for her second-most in a Cowgirl uniform. The bulk of her scoring came in the second quarter where she had nine points and was 3-for-3 from deep.

A Villanova transfer, Garzon came into Saturday’s game shooting 42% from 3 but was just 1-for-10 in OSU’s past two games. She got going again, going 4-for-9 from deep and finishing with 14 points.

Alnatas, the Cowgirls’ point guard, did it all. She finished with 13 points, four rebounds and three assists. Alnatas came into the game as OSU’s leading scorer, averaging 13.9 points a game.

On top of shooting an impressive 38% from deep, OSU also outscored Baylor 42-20 in the paint thanks to impressive performances from Owasso’s Terryn Milton and Muldrow’s Taylen Collins.

Milton scored eight of her 14 points in the third quarter and finished 6-for-10 from the field. She was also a team best +24. Collins scored 11 points to go with her 13 rebounds. It’s her second straight double-double and her seventh of the season.

The Cowgirls also played stifling defense right from opening tip, forcing Baylor into four turnovers in its opening five possessions. Baylor had eight first-quarter turnovers which led to eight first-quarter points off turnovers for OSU. Baylor finished with 19 turnovers in the game, and OSU had 15 points off those turnovers.

This is the Cowgirls’ fourth straight Big 12 win and boosts them to 8-5 in the league with five games until the Big 12 Tournament. OSU was projected as a No. 9 seed in ESPN’s bracketology, which updated Friday. The Cowgirls don’t have a midweek game this week but will be back in action next Saturday against Texas Tech in Lubbock.

“We obviously have an end goal in mind, but we know we just gotta take it day by day,” Hoyt said. “This team is really mature. They understand that. They don’t look too far ahead. I don’t think they get hung up on things from the past. They’re just very much in the present. We’re having the time of our life. This team is having so much fun.”

Jacie Hoyt’s Postgame News Conference