Aggie women headed to top-ranked Baylor

Envy is a powerful motivator, and there will be plenty to go around Saturday when the top-ranked Baylor women's basketball team plays host to 15th-ranked Texas A&M at 5 p.m. at the Ferrell Center.

Baylor has been playing like the team A&M aspires to be, while Baylor wants to finish the season as national champion, which A&M did a year ago, much to the chagrin of the Lady Bears.

Baylor defeated A&M three times last season, but when it mattered most the Aggies beat the Lady Bears to win the Dallas Regional and advance to the Final Four.

"It's going to be huge motivation for them because we knocked them out of a national championship, because I think they would have won," A&M head coach Gary Blair said.

That's certainly the way the Lady Bears feel. And if Baylor were the defending champion, we'd be talking about a dynasty in the making. That would have been Baylor's second title in seven years, and with junior Brittany Griner, the most dominant player in the game's history, the Lady Bears would have visions of adding two more national titles.

As it is, the 24-0 Lady Bears are settling right now for playing like national champions. They are clearly the best team in the land, having defeated second-ranked Notre Dame and third-ranked Connecticut. But victories in November and December or even March, for that matter, aren't what folks remember. Baylor was 34-3 last season with three victories over the Aggies and another one over runner-up Notre Dame, but the Lady Bears stewed during the offseason while Blair went to Disney World and the Aggies posed for pictures with President Obama.

A&M, though, didn't look like a defending national champion when the season started. Early losses at Purdue and UConn were shrugged off as learning experiences, but losses to Kansas State, Texas and Oklahoma State -- all currently unranked teams -- showed the Aggies weren't close to being Final Four caliber.

But A&M has played better in recent weeks, winning four straight and seven of eight. The Aggies are better, but how much better? Only one of the teams A&M defeated, Texas Tech, has been able to give Baylor a game, and that was in Lubbock.

Baylor is certainly a huge challenge for the Aggies. They don't have to win, they just need to be competitive. That was the case during an eight-game losing streak to Baylor that ended with A&M's 58-46 victory in Dallas last season. Baylor had been clearly the better team, but it couldn't break A&M, which never lost its confidence and kept improving. The Aggies never lost by more than nine points during the losing streak, with five of the losses by three points or fewer, including two last season.

"Last year we were pretty doggone good, too," Blair said.

That's kind of a trite statement looking back, but it took the upset of Baylor for much of the nation to realize that. Then the victories over Stanford and Notre Dame at the Final Four just amplified what A&M accomplished by getting past the Lady Bears.

This year the challenge is steeper for A&M because, as Blair has said several times, "We're still a work in progress," and Baylor is better than it was a year ago.

Baylor's goal has to be that A&M leaves Waco in a panic mode. The Lady Bears don't want a repeat of last season, so you can expect them never to let up Saturday. The Lady Bears don't want the Aggies thinking they'll have a chance at College Station on Feb. 27 or if they meet in the Big 12 tournament in Kansas City next month.

Blair's already planted the seed that he'd love to play Baylor four times again, because that means the last matchup would be in the Final Four. Blair doesn't think the NCAA Selection Committee would put the nation's best team and the defending champs in the same region a second straight time.

That's why Blair is looking at Saturday's game as the first step toward reaching the Final Four, which seemed out of reach just three weeks ago. If A&M has any chance at getting to Denver, this year's Final Four site, the Aggies will need continued improvement from 6-foot-4 sophomore post Kelsey Bone, who was the preseason Big 12 newcomer of the year.

Bone, who transferred from South Carolina, has played well in the last three games after struggling to adjust after sitting out last season. Bone was the nation's second-ranked recruit behind the 6-8 Griner in the Class of 2009. Griner has become the best player the game has ever seen, but Bone is the one with the national championship ring.

"I'm definitely excited, but a lot of people are going to try to make it about Brittany and I but it's about Texas A&M and Baylor," said Bone, who split a pair of games in high school against Griner.

She's right about that, since this matchup will be A&M's last trip to the Ferrell Center as a member of the Big 12 Conference. The Aggies are headed to the Southeastern Conference, and Baylor head coach Kim Mulkey has made it clear she won't play them again unless it's in the NCAA tournament.

"If a man wants to divorce me and says our relationship has no value to him, and then he asks me if he can sleep with me, the answer is, 'No!'," Mulkey said at the time A&M joined the SEC.

A sold-out crowd will try to make A&M's last trip to Waco as uncomfortable as possible.

"We have hardly sold any tickets for our Baylor game here and we need to get on the ball," Blair said. "Let's just not wait until the day before. Let's start buying them now, because if not the Waco fans are going to come down and they are going to buy them while we are thinking about it."

It's amazing what envy can do.

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Baylor has won a school-record 36 consecutive home games ... A&M forces opponents into 21.5 turnovers per game, but Baylor averages only 14.1 turnovers per game. ... BU is holding opponents to 30.3 field-goal percentage. ... Griner averages 5.3 blocks per game. ... Baylor was 15-1 last season in the Big 12.

*Robert Cessna's email address is robert.cessna@theeagle.com