Women's Basketball has Big 12 showdown at No. 4 Baylor on Jan. 7
AUSTIN, Texas -- The Big 12 Conference's two best women's basketball teams from a year ago - Baylor and Texas - will meet on Saturday, Jan. 7 in a 3 p.m. league game at the Ferrell Center in Waco. The game will be televised live on FSN (FOX Sports Net TV). Both UT and Baylor are 0-1 in league action. A Texas win will move head coach Jody Conradt into a tie with legendary coach Adolph Rupp for the No. 3 spot in all-time college basketball victories. Conradt has 875 career wins, while Rupp has 876. Neither the 23rd-ranked Longhorns (6-5) or No. 4 ranked Baylor Lady Bears (10-1) started the Big 12 season off on a positive note this week. Texas dropped its season opener to a much-improved and undefeated (12-0) Kansas squad, 70-61 on January 3 in Lawrence, Kansas, while Baylor was surprised by unranked Missouri, 64-61 in Columbia, Missouri on January 4. Saturday's Texas-Baylor game is a match-up between the league's top two teams from a year ago - the regular season champion Lady Bears and runnerup Longhorns. Baylor won the league regular season and tournament titles, going 14-2 in league regular season action, to edge out the Longhorns (13-3 in conference play). "Anytime you go on the road in our league, it is going to be really difficult," noted Conradt. "And, we are not only going into a hostile road environment with a crowd which may be a sellout, with most of the fans dressed in Baylor green and gold; we are going up against the defending national champions. In the last three days of practice, we've talked a lot about the focus and intensity we are going to need for the full 40 minutes Saturday in Waco. It is really important that we have a strong showing, especially after starting Big 12 play the way we did." This will be Texas' third straight nationally-televised road game, following away contests at No. 9 Rutgers and at Kansas, with both games shown on CSTV. The Longhorns continue their demanding schedule, as Baylor will be the fourth top-10 team Texas will face so far. Jody Conradt's squad has a schedule which is ranked as the SECOND TOUGHEST in the nation, according to the RPI (Ratings Percentage Indexes) used in Division I basketball. (The toughest schedule in the nation belongs to Old Dominion). In the CollegeRPI.com ratings as of January 6th, the Longhorns stand No. 11 overall in RPI. Baylor ranks No. 9 in the RPI, and its schedule is ranked as the 29th toughest in the land. Of this week's AP Top 25 teams, seven are on Texas' regular season schedule: No. 1 Tennessee, No. 2 Duke, No. 4 Baylor, No. 7 UConn, No. 8 Rutgers, No. 18 Oklahoma and No. 21 New Mexico. In the , Tennessee (14-0) and North Carolina (13-0) rank one-two in the RPI. In addition to the game being televised on FSN, it also will be broadcast on the radio via KVET Radio/SportsRadio 1300 AM the Zone in the Central Texas area or via the internet at subscription-based service (found at TexasSports.com).
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