Brittney Griner led the Baylor Lady Bears to a 90-60 victory over Texas Tech Wednesday, while dropping 40 points, which propelled her into the Big 12 record books as the all-time leading career points scorer in conference history.
Griner eclipsed Oklahoma State Andrea Riley’s record of 2,835 points, which she amassed from 2007-10 playing for the Cowboys. Griner finished the end of the night with 2,873 points for her career, but will easily be knocking at the 3,000 point total if she does not get injured and they go deep in the NCAA Women’s Tournament.
Lady Bears coach Kim Mulkey knew that she had a star in the making when she first recruited Griner, and is not shocked that she has broken records so far.
“When Brittney came four years ago I told everybody, ‘You better buy tickets. You’ll never see anything like her again,’ and at the time you didn’t talk about the records that she would break,” Mulkey said to The Associate Press. “But after you saw her play it was pretty obvious she’s going to be a phenom and it’s not surprising that she’s broken those records.”
Griner’s 40-point performance Wednesday night was the fourth time she has scored that many points in a game. She grabbed 15 rebounds for her 51st double-double.
Griner did not seem fazed by the new record she had set.
“Just happy to get the win, really, first,” Griner said. “My team did a good job of getting me the ball, good looks. When I didn’t have a shot, they did a great job on cutting to the basket so I could find them. We were just clicking from the jump, we were on all cylinders.”
The 6-foot-8 Griner was 17 of 25 from the field and 6 for 9 from the free throw line. She helped the Lady Bears to their 31st consecutive Big 12 regular-season victory. The last time they lost in the Big 12, it was to the Lady Red Raiders.
Griner’s size caused problems for the Lady Red Raiders. They were outscored 50 to 18 in points in the paint. Baylor also scored 17 points off the Lady Raiders’ 13 turnovers.
This is the second record Griner has broken within a week. On Saturday, she set the NCAA record for career blocks, with 665 against the Oklahoma Sooners. Louella Tomlinson had the record with 663 while playing for St. Mary’s in California from 2007-2011.
Griner added seven more blocks Wednesday night, giving her 30 in the last four games. She also had her record 12th dunk, which leads the NCAA.
“I think she’s trying to trying to break the NCAA scoring record,” Texas Tech coach Kristy Curry said.
Jackie Stile currently holds the all-time record in women’s Division I basketball with 3,393 while playing at Southwest Missouri State from 1997-2001.
With 10 games left in the regular season, Griner would need to average 52.0 points a game to tie the record, but could easily come close to it if they make it to the Final Four.
