Baylor, Griner 1 win from title and history

Associated Press

DENVER

All season long, Baylor has been the best team led by the best player in the country.

And that just makes the stakes in tonight’s NCAA championship a little higher.

Anything short of a women’s national title would be deemed a failure for Brittney Griner and the Bears.

That may explain why Baylor hasn’t focused on an undefeated season, nor on becoming the first team in NCAA history to win 40 games.

Standing in the way is Notre Dame, a team on a mission ever since losing in last year’s championship to Texas A&M and led by maybe the nation’s second-most dynamic player, All-American Skylar Diggins.

“Forty-oh was never really the goal,” said Griner. “We have team goals each year and our goal was to win a national championship.

“If you lose, you can’t win a national championship. You’ve got to go 40-0 now.”

Griner knows that despite the Bears’ incredible season, how it’s judged will depend on tonight.

“We don’t have that ring yet,” the 6-foot-8 junior said.

“That’s the main goal. Until we get that, we’re going to feel like we haven’t really done anything.”

The Irish know the feeling, having fallen just short last season to Texas A&M. Notre Dame (35-3) has been focused on getting back to this game all season long. Soon after Diggins and her Notre Dame teammates arrived in South Bend after the championship last year, the junior guard went to the locker room. She put up on the chalkboard in the locker room, “Unfinished Business: 76-70, 15:52,” the time referring to the game’s turning point.

“We’ve had one goal all season long,” Diggins said. “We’ve wanted to get back here and play in this game.”

The Irish have been one of the best teams in the country all season long, but don’t have to worry about the weight of expectations.

“I think when you’re undefeated you have a lot of confidence, but at the same time it’s just a little bit of pressure of knowing that you’ve never lost. And when it gets down to the end of the game, you hope they feel that pressure,” Notre Dame coach Muffet McGraw said.

With a win, Baylor would become the seventh team to run through a season unbeaten, joining Connecticut — which has done it four times, Tennessee and Texas. It would be the school’s second national championship. Baylor also won in 2005.

“Win or lose tomorrow we’re going to head back to Waco,” Baylor coach Kim Mulkey said.

“We know that whoever beats us, just make sure that you didn’t beat yourself. Make sure that team was better than you that night. If you do that, you can’t fault your effort.”