Women's basketball team seeks Baylor's level of success

By By Michael Phillips

Tuesday, August 30, 2005

When the Kansas women’s basketball team plays Baylor this year, the Jayhawks will be going up against more than just the defending national champions. It will be a match up against a team whose story the Jayhawks would like to emulate.

It took Baylor women’s basketball coach Kim Mulkey-Robertson just five years after coming to Waco, Texas, to turn the team into national champions.

As Kansas women’s basketball coach Bonnie Henrickson enters her second year, she said she saw the Baylor national title victory as a positive for Kansas.

“It helps us to be able to look at how quickly they were able to turn it around and win a national championship,” Henrickson said.

2004-05 NCAA Division I Women’s Basketball Conference Attendance Leaders

1. Big 12 - 937,611 (5,180 per game)

2. Big Ten - 799,605 (4,998 per game)

3. SEC - 687,655 (3,799 per game)

4. Big East - 565,912 (3,290 per game)

5. ACC - 461,760 (2,654 per game)

Source: big12sports.com

The quality of play in the Big 12 Conference is as high as anywhere else in the country. The conference has led the NCAA in attendance at women’s games for the last six years, according to big12sports.com.

“It’s such a tough league to win on the road because of the crowds,” Henrickson said. “It is hard to play in front of six or seven thousand people a night. That doesn’t happen in any other league.”

Senior forward Crystal Kemp said she expected the league to be even tougher than it was last year, when the conference had five teams ranked in the top 25.

“It’s going to be more competitive, and we’re going to try to prove that we can play with them,” Kemp said.

Kansas ranked 11th in the league in home attendance last year with a total of 34,031. Its biggest crowd was when Kansas State brought its fans down I-70 and visited Allen Fieldhouse. The game attracted 5,551 people, according to kuathletics.com.

Henrickson said she was confident that success would generate fans for the Fieldhouse to be an intimidating venue for visiting opponents. She said she compared the style of the women’s game to that of the NBA in the ‘60s, which put an emphasis on fundamental passing and scoring.

If that holds true, Baylor will stand as the Los Angeles Lakers of the league, with its national title last season.

Kansas will try to thrive on increased attendance and success on the court to work its way toward Baylor’s level of success on the hardwood last season.

— Edited by Patrick Ross

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