Emotions were flowing in Tampa after Baylor defeated Notre Dame 82-81 in dramatic fashion. TAMPA, Fla. — Confetti fell, the net was cut and tears of joy flowed. The Lady Bears put on an incredible performance against Notre Dame to secure the program's third national title. Now, only Geno Auriemma and Pat Summitt have more national championships as a coach than Baylor's Kim Mulkey. Mulkey was emotional after her squad bested Notre Dame in the National Championship. In the third quarter, All-American Lauren Cox went down with a knee injury. Baylor led by as much as 17 points before Cox's injury, and Baylor's defense absolutely stifled Notre Dame. Once Cox was out, the Fighting Irish lived up to their name, and they clawed out of the hole they were in. Baylor stood strong in the face of adversity, and came out on top. Despite Notre Dame's push in the fourth quarter, Mulkey said her team's performance overall was dominant. Mulkey also said the win reminded her that family comes first. KCEN Channel 6 sports reporter Jessica Morrey went to the locker room after the game. Morrey asked players what went through their head as the clock finally hit zero. Grad transfer Chloe Jackson, who was selected as the tournament's Most Outstanding Player, said a ton of emotions went through her mind. Sophomore guard Moon Ursin said the win was a relief, because she was a big proponent of the team's motto "Together To Tampa" all season. Sophomore guard DiDi Richards said she thought of her grandpa, who is from Tampa and recently passed away. She said she dedicated the win to him. Freshman forward NaLyssa Smith played like a veteran against the Irish, putting up 17 points on seven of nine shots from the field. Smith said her play shows how deep the team is. Coach Mulkey praised the freshman's performance. Lady Bear parents were in Tampa Sunday night to see their stars shine on the brightest stage. One parent said she never lost faith in Baylor, even when the game was tied. Lauren Cox's mom said her daughter brought energy back to the team when she showed up to the sideline to keep cheering on her squad, despite her injury. Although fans said they felt stressful when Notre Dame stormed back, they're pumped they made the journey to Tampa to witness history.<doc-sep>Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images The Baylor Lady Bears are national champions for the third time after they defeated the Notre Dame Fighting Irish 82-81 on Sunday in the 2019 NCAA women's basketball tournament title game. Chloe Jackson gave Baylor an 82-80 lead with 3.9 seconds remaining. With 1.9 seconds left, Moon Ursin fouled Arike Ogunbowale to send her to the free-throw line for a shot at tying the game. Ogunbowale missed the first and sank the second. Too little time was left on the clock for the Fighting Irish to foul Baylor and hope for a desperation shot attempt at the buzzer. This is the second time Baylor beat Notre Dame in the final, with the Lady Bears also getting the better of the Fighting Irish in 2012. Defense was Baylor's calling card all season. The Lady Bears allowed the 10th-fewest points per game (55.0) and ranked first in opponent field-goal percentage (31.6 percent). Notre Dame was another victim of that suffocating defense, shooting 38.9 percent as a team. Ogunbowale was the hero of last year's Final Four, hitting game-winners in both the national semifinals and national championship. The pair of Juicy Landrum and DiDi Richards couldn't hold Ogunbowale in check as the senior guard had 31 points in the defeat. Jackson's last-second layup capped off a fantastic performance. She had a team-high 26 points, adding two rebounds, five assists and two steals. Kalani Brown was also a force inside for Baylor, scoring 20 points and grabbing 13 rebounds. Video Play Button Videos you might like The game was something of a Pyrrhic victory for Baylor. With 1:22 left in the third quarter, Lauren Cox was getting into position for a rebound when Brown inadvertently stepped on her leg. Cox's left knee bent at an awkward angle, and she immediately fell to the floor clutching her left knee. The Baylor trainers placed the junior forward in a wheelchair and took her back to the locker room. Beyond the emotional blow Cox's injury had for her teammates, she was the team's second-leading scorer (13.2 points per game) and leading rebounder (8.4 per game) entering Sunday night. The loss of one of Baylor's best players opened the door for Notre Dame, and Ogunbowale gave the Fighting Irish a much-needed momentum boost when she connected on a three-pointer to end the third quarter. Notre Dame opened the fourth quarter on a 14-6 run to make it a three-point game, 72-69. As the Fighting Irish were working their way back, Cox's absence was especially noticeable. Although Brown was still an imposing figure inside, points in the paint became much easier to find. Marina Mabrey finally tied the game at 74 with a three-pointer at the 5:18 mark of the final quarter. That set the stage for a breathless final five minutes as Baylor and Notre Dame exchanged the lead three times. Before her game-clinching layup, Jackson hit an even more difficult floater to put the Lady Bears ahead inside the final minute. Rather than irreparably damaging her team's national championship hopes, Cox's injury had a galvanizing effect for Baylor. Perhaps the Lady Bears would've pulled away in the fourth quarter with her healthy, but her presence on the bench gave them one more reason to bring the title home. After the final buzzer, Brown and Cox shared an emotional moment on the court. Sunday's win caps off one of the best seasons in Baylor history. The Lady Bears' 37 wins are their second-most in a single season, only falling short of their perfect 40-0 season in 2012. Baylor was the best team in the country, earning the No. 1 overall seed in the NCAA tournament. In the semifinals, the Lady Bears successfully neutralized Sabrina Ionescu, then they shut down a Notre Dame team firing on all cylinders and fresh off a hard-fought victory over the Connecticut Huskies. In time, the focus will shift to the health of Cox because the Lady Bears have the pieces to successfully defend their championship. Although Brown and Jackson will graduate, the trio of Landrum, Cox and Richards all return. Depending on the severity of Cox's injury, though, her availability for 2019-20 could be in question. For now, Baylor will savor its place atop the summit of women's college basketball.<doc-sep>TAMPA, Fla. — One by one, Baylor players and coaches scaled a ladder to trim away the net under the south hoop at Amalie Arena, a celebratory parade capped by coach Kim Mulkey, her daughter Makenzie Marie Robertson and Mulkey's grandson. Perhaps sensing the moment, the in-arena DJ queued up "Circle of Life," the generational hit from the movie The Lion King. The Mulkey clan responded: Up the grandson went above his mother's head, like a young Simba, before coming back down, sliding into his father's arms and unleashing a burp down his chin and onto his Baylor shirt. The Lady Bears' third national championship wasn't perfect — it was even sloppy, like a burp-stained championship shirt, and nearly dribbled away in the second half. It was a "battle," Mulkey called it, physically demanding and emotionally draining. It was in hand late in the third quarter, nearly blown after losing star forward Lauren Cox to injury and then won, in no small part thanks to the same player. "We all wanted to win the game for her," said freshman forward Caitlin Bickle. "We wanted to carry that out for her just because we’ve worked so hard to get here and we wanted to win that for her." The Bears' performance on Sunday night can be evenly split into two parts: With Cox and without. With the junior, the Bears thoroughly outplayed Notre Dame, the defending national champions, in what turned into a thrilling 82-81 win. Without Cox, it took every ounce of energy, a few fortuitous bounces and the reversal of recent Final Four history for Baylor to pull out its third championship under Mulkey. "For us to win probably was a miracle in itself when you lose a player of that caliber," Mulkey said. "Not only the talent she has, but she's our leader, people." Cox was the center of two turning points, one that seemed to shift the game in Notre Dame's favor and the other that turned the game back toward Baylor. NOTRE DAME:Last year's hero Arike Ogunbowale comes up just short With 1:22 left in the third quarter, Notre Dame forward Jessica Shepard corralled a rebound and banked in a layup, drawing the Fighting Irish within 12 points at 62-50. Meanwhile, two Baylor players had become tangled in the chase for the loose ball. One, center Kalani Brown — who herself battled a hip injury — was fine. The other, Cox, laid prone on the court, gripping her left knee and screaming, her voice loud enough to be heard clearly in a hushed arena. Cox was in tears. Her parents, shown on the ESPN broadcast, were also emotional. As a wheelchair came onto the court and rolled Cox toward the locker room, Mulkey and her staff spoke to a huddled team: "It's sports," they said, Bickle recalled. "It happens. Take care of it." Baylor players were stunned. "I felt like my whole face just shattered," junior guard Juicy Landrum said. Cox is "the heart and soul of our team," said Bickle. It's no coincidence that Cox's exit was greeted by Notre Dame's run. To that point, Baylor had scored 42 points in the paint. Cox was well on her way to her second double-double of the Final Four, joining the Bears' win against Oregon in the semifinals. The Bears had found a formula: Pound the ball inside. It was no longer an effective option without Cox. "We controlled that game from the start until the time she went off the floor," Mulkey said. "We were losing the momentum at that point with Cox gone." Down by 11 points entering the fourth quarter, the Irish would go on a 19-8 run to tie the game at 74-74 with five minutes left. Mulkey called timeout. Fifteen seconds later, Cox hobbled back to the Baylor bench, her left leg in a brace and her arms on crutches. To see Cox on the bench was "a little frustrating," Landrum said, but "it was a big lift," providing Baylor with a needed boost. You've got this, Cox told her teammates. "It meant everything to us, just to see that she was alright," said freshman NaLyssa Smith, who replaced Cox and scored six of her 10 points in the fourth quarter. "That just gave us a whole bunch of momentum." Momentum helped stem the Notre Dame run, altering what seemed like a preordained finish. A season ago, the Irish rode late heroics to the national title. Again in Friday's semifinal against Connecticut, the Irish recovered from a sluggish start to defeat the rival Huskies for the second postseason in a row. On Sunday night, however, the bounces went Baylor's way. Chloe Jackson's game-winning lay-up with 3.9 seconds left bounced twice off the rim — the left and the front — before falling through the net. Shooting two free throws with a chance to tie the game with a second left, Notre Dame's Arike Ogunbowale's first try did a similar dance around the hoop before falling off. Seemingly trying to miss her next attempt, Ogunbowale instead made the free throw. Notre Dame had exhausted its postseason magic, and Baylor would win by a point. After the final whistle, Brown raced to embrace Cox, telling her teammate, "We did this for you." "We had to pull it together, pull it out for her," Brown said. "The whole time, she was coaching on the sideline. She was still involved. I mean, she came out of that tunnel ... I think that speaks volumes of her character." It helps to tell the story of Baylor's title. The program's last winners, in 2012, raced through the year unbeaten, becoming the first team in college basketball history to finish 40-0. This one may have cruised through the final two-plus months of the regular season but had to sweat out April, surprisingly pushed by Oregon and then nearly tripped up by Notre Dame. In the face of by far its biggest challenge — the talent of Notre Dame combined with the loss of its junior star — Baylor delivered the third championship in program history.<doc-sep>Chloe Jackson drives in for a layup to put Baylor up by two with 3.9 seconds left. (0:23) TAMPA, Fla. -- Everything about the first 29 minutes of the NCAA women's championship game said Baylor was going to win. The Lady Bears dominated in the paint, with their guards, in transition, making Notre Dame look a step slow and totally out of sync. With 1:22 left in the third quarter, Lauren Cox fell to the court, clutching her left knee. Her teammates looked on, stunned. The arena fell silent. "I wanted to cry," Chloe Jackson said. "My head went blank," NaLyssa Smith said. "Like a stab in the heart," DiDi Richards said. "It was like, 'What are we going to do?'" Baylor coach Kim Mulkey went to check on Cox. She vowed the Bears would win the game for Cox. Meanwhile, assistant coach Bill Brock huddled the players together. "He said, 'Guys this is basketball. It happens, but we're Baylor. And we're here in this moment right now. Let's go finish this game, let's go win this ball game,'" Moon Ursin said. "We just wanted to get it done for her." Jackson did that when her driving layup with 3.9 seconds left helped give Baylor its third national championship. But the Lady Bears' 82-81 win over Notre Dame on Sunday night was as much about Cox as it was about how Baylor reacted, and how a grad transfer point guard kept a promise she made to all her teammates and became the Women's Final Four's most outstanding player. "I couldn't come this far and then go home without the victory," Jackson said. When Cox left the floor in a wheelchair, nobody knew the severity of her injury, or whether she would even come back to the bench. The entire game changed in that one moment. When Lauren Cox went down with an injury to her left knee, Baylor led 62-50 with 1:22 to play in the third quarter. Notre Dame eventually took the lead 77-76, but Baylor rallied for an 82-81 win. Jasen Vinlove-USA TODAY Sports Notre Dame, a second-half team throughout the tournament, looked emboldened and far more aggressive. The Fighting Irish went on a 13-5 run with eight points from Arike Ogunbowale to close the gap to three early in the fourth quarter. Then, Notre Dame's Marina Mabrey got going from the 3-point line, hitting three straight to help tie the game at 74 with 5:18 to play. Two minutes later, Notre Dame had its first lead since the 8:20 mark of the first quarter. "LC just has such an impact on the game -- when a player like that goes out, things are going to change, and we just had to figure it out," Ursin said. "They took advantage of that, and they made the best out of it when LC went out. We had to dig a little deeper. We had to figure out what to do, and we did down the stretch." They did it not only thanks to Jackson, but thanks to Cox, who returned to the bench on crutches, with a knee brace on for the final five minutes. You could see her teammates' spirits lift when they saw her smiling. "I needed to be there, to reassure them that I was OK and I'm still over here cheering for them," Cox said. She told her teammates to keep believing they would win, but she also offered advice about plays to run. Cox noticed the play they kept running for Jackson was working. After trading buckets and free throws, Jackson hit a jumper with 33.8 seconds left to put Baylor ahead. But Jessica Shepard was fouled and hit both her free throws, tying the game at 80. Mulkey called the same exact play she called for Jackson in the semifinal against Oregon: Jackson took the ball, Richards hit a perfect screen and Jackson had a wide-open lane to the basket. Her driving layup with 3.9 seconds remaining Sunday put Baylor ahead 82-80. "I've never felt so valuable. That screen was something serious!" Richards said. Baylor's Chloe Jackson celebrates with teammates after scoring or assisting on the Lady Bears' final six points, including the game-winning layup. AP Photo/Chris O'Meara But there was no time to celebrate. Not surprisingly, Ogunbowale got the ball on the other end. The star of last year's Final Four has become such a clutch player in the fourth quarter, it almost felt like a given she would make something happen. She drew a foul and went to the line with 1.9 seconds remaining. Ogunbowale is an 80 percent free throw shooter. She lives for pressure situations. As she stepped to the line, Jackson prayed, "Just let her miss one." The first one missed. She tried to miss the second one, but it went in. Baylor successfully inbounded the ball, denying the Irish a chance to repeat as champions. "The game didn't come down to that free throw," Notre Dame coach Muffet McGraw said. As the final buzzer sounded, Kalani Brown embraced Cox on the bench. The two post players have formed the backbone of Baylor's team, and the motto "Together to Tampa" was largely inspired to try to get Brown the championship in her senior season. "I just told her, 'We did this for you,'" said Brown, who scored 20 points and had 13 rebounds. "When she went down, we got a little rattled. But we had to pull it together, pull it out for her." Baylor would not have pulled it out without a career night from Jackson, who scored a season-high 26 points. It was only the third time all season she scored 20 or more points. Though she made the go-ahead layup against Oregon, Jackson had a tough shooting night against the Ducks and had just six points. But that winning shot gave her much-needed confidence, and she vowed to be more aggressive against the Irish. "Since 7 this morning, I kept saying, 'We're gonna win,' and Chloe's like, 'DiDi, I know we're going to win. I promise. I got it,'" Richards said.<doc-sep>
The Baylor Lady Bears are the 2019 national champions after defeating Notre Dame 82-81 in the women's NCAA Tournament title game on Sunday in Tampa, Florida. After Baylor squandered a 17-point lead, the Lady Bears' Chloe Jackson capped the best game of her career with a driving layup with 3.9 seconds remaining to put Baylor up 82-80. On the other end, Arike Ogunbowale got fouled, but her first free-throw attempt rimmed out. Though she tried to miss the second one, it was all net, and with fouls to give, that was the game. For much of the game, Baylor continued the dominance they've shown all season long. They jumped out to a 25-14 lead after the first quarter, and held Notre Dame at an arm's length with their typical stout defense, and command of the paint through All-Americans Kalani Brown and Lauren Cox. With Baylor up by as much as 17 points, this season's title game looked like it was going to be a repeat of the 2012 championship between these two teams, when Baylor, led by their star center Brittney Griner, cruised to a 80-61 victory. But late in the third, Cox went down with a nasty looking leg injury that forced her to leave on a wheelchair, and knocked her out of the game. And with Cox's injury, and a buzzer-beating 3-pointer by Ogunbowale to end the third quarter, it was clear the momentum was changing. Baylor coach Kim Mulkey could sense the game slipping away when Cox went down. "We controlled that game from the start till the time she went off the floor," Mulkey said. "We had to regroup. For us to win probably was a miracle in itself when you lose a player of that caliber, not only the talent she has, but she's our leader, people. She's our leader." The Irish burst out of the gates in the fourth quarter, thanks to some hot shooting from the school's all-time leading 3-point shooter, Marina Mabrey. The senior knocked down three triples in a two-minute span, including one to tie it at 74-74 with just over five minutes to play. From there, the teams traded bucket for bucket down the stretch, as the game turned from a snoozer into an all-time classic as Baylor won the third national title in school history. Here are a few takeaways from Baylor's victory: Cox's game-ending injury shows her impact Cox has been tremendous for Baylor all season long, but she's often been overshadowed by her frontcourt partner Brown. But if there was any doubt about Cox's impact on this Lady Bears team, it was put to rest after she went down with a leg injury in the closing minute of the third quarter. To that point, Cox was playing a typically impressive game on both ends of the floor. She had eight points, eight rebounds, two assists and three blocks, and most importantly was leading the Bears to another strong defensive performance. Baylor was the No. 1 field goal defense in the country this season, and Cox's leadership was a big reason for that strength. That defense forced Notre Dame into a 1 of 13 start from the field, and just six points in the paint in the first half. That's impressive against any team, but especially an elite offense like the Fighting Irish. Up until the point that Cox went down, Baylor was up 62-50, and Notre Dame was just 19 of 51 from the field through nearly three quarters. After Cox's injury, the Irish shot 9 of 21 from the field, and scored 31 of their 81 points in just 11 minutes. Now, that wasn't all because Cox was no longer in the game, but it was certainly a big reason. Without Baylor's two elite defenders inside, it was much easier for Notre Dame to get into the paint. In fact, on Notre Dame's very first possession after her injury, Ogunbowale sliced into the paint for one of the easiest looks she got all night. And on the other end, even with some big buckets from freshman NaLyssa Smith, Baylor had a much tougher time scoring without Cox in the game. They were unable to go to their classic high-low action with Brown and Cox, and it became much easier for Notre Dame's defense to key in on Brown and deny her the ball. Scenes like this were commonplace, with multiple defenders eating up Brown's space. Notre Dame's defense keying in on Brown.