Arkansas sweeps Horns in baseball
Another 30-win season, another Big 12 championship and another NCAA Tournament opener at home for No. 2 Baylor.
While so much is the same as usual in March for the Lady Bears, this has been the most heart-wrenching season off the court for coach Kim Mulkey.
“I’ve shed more tears with this team ... because that’s their personality,” Mulkey said. “We have to address the things that pop up in order for them to move on, and it’s just been one after another. And I don’t know that any of us have had time to really take a breath.”
The Lady Bears have gone through the loss of Mulkey’s first grandchild, the death of a former championship-win- ning player who had cancer and other real-life issues off the court that college kids sometimes face when away from home. There have also been season-ending injuries.
“We definitely saw a differ- ent side of her, definitely a more emotional side,” senior forward Dekeiya Cohen said. “Just seeing her come from a tough place ... and come coach us every day, and she says we’re the highlight of her day a lot. Just seeing that side of her, and hearing her talk like that, it definitely means a lot to me.”
The Lady Bears (31-1) swept through Big 12 play for their eighth straight regular-season title, then won their eighth conference tournament in the past 10 seasons. They will open NCAA play at home for the sixth year in a row Friday night as the No. 2 seed in the Lexington Regional against Grambling State (19-13).
Only a week into the season, Mulkey’s daughter, Makenzie Fuller, a former Lady Bears player now on her mother’s staff, lost her baby girl about 18 weeks into her pregnancy.
In January, former Baylor player Chameka Scott died of colon cancer. Scott was one of Mulkey’s first recruits and the player the coach called “the heartbeat” of their 2005 national championship team.
“You don’t put on a stern face when you deal with death. You address it, you cry, you talk about it,” said Mulkey, who is in her 18th season at Baylor.
The Texas baseball team rallied but eventually fell 7-5 to No. 5 Arkansas in Fayetteville on Wednesday as the Razorbacks swept the twogame series.
Texas (9-9) took an early 2-0 lead, but five consecu- tive runs by Arkansas (13-4), including a four-run fourth inning, put the home team back in the driver’s seat.
Casey Martin went 2-for-3 with three runs scored, a home run and two RBI for the Hogs. Evan Lee also had two hits in three at-bats, scored a run and drove in two.
For Texas, Kody Clemens went 1-for-4 with a double and an RBI, and Zach Zubia doubled, drove in a run and scored another.
With the Longhorns trail- ing 5-2 in the fifth, Clemens hit a double that scored Masen Hibbeler to make it 5-3.
Texas added two more runs in the eighth to pull within a run. Zubia’s lead- off double started the rally. Ryan Reynolds singled to score Zubia. Austin Todd got aboard with an infield hit, and Duke Ellis singled to score him and make it 6-5. But UT could get no closer.
Women’s golf: Freshman Kaitlyn Papp earned her sec- ond individual victory in three events as Texas won the Dr. Donnis Thompson Invitational in Kaneohe, Hawaii, on Wednesday.
The No. 6 Longhorns took their second team title this season, shooting 294 in the final round for an overall 883, 19-over-par. They were better than second-place Oklahoma State by 24 strokes.
Papp shot a tourna- ment-best 68 Wednesday. She finished at 213, 3-underpar for the tournament.
“Pappy is playing at a very high level right now,” UT coach Ryan Murphy said. “To start the final round with the lead and go out and expand on that lead is a rare trait. This young woman is as strong mentally as anyone you’ll ever come across.”
Papp joins Sophia Schubert as the only current team members to have two career individual victories.
Not too far behind Papp was teammate Emilee Hoffman. She tied for second at 221, 5-over-par.
Schubert, named to the Arnold Palmer Cup team earlier in the day, tied for fourth at 7 over. The Arnold Palmer Cup will begin July 6, and Schubert will compete alongside five other collegiate golfers on the U.S. squad.
Women’s swimming: For the second year in a row, UT’s 800-yard freestyle relay team set a school record as the NCAA Championships kicked off Wednesday in Columbus, Ohio.
Quinn Carrozza, Claire Adams, Evie Pfeifer and Rebecca Millard finished fifth while making UT history. Their time of 6 minutes, 53.42 seconds topped last season’s 6:54.83. Adams was on that relay squad as well.
Men’s tennis: No. 10 Texas won two singles matches but fell to No. 11 Southern California 5-2 in Los Angeles on Wednesday. The Longhorns got wins from Christian Sigsgaard and Adrian Ortiz, but that wasn’t enough to win the battle of highly ranked teams.