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Logic, Johnson shine at point
Jeff Linder Mar. 27, 2015 11:41 pm
OKLAHOMA CITY - They were on point. Both of them.
Point guards Niya Johnson and Samantha Logic both displayed brilliance in Friday night's NCAA women's basketball regional semifinal, won by Baylor, 81-66, at Chesapeake Energy Arena.
The nation's leader in assists, Johnson dished out 16 of them Friday. And she didn't commit a turnover.
'(I was) really just finding the open teammate, trying to drive and attack, make them close down on me and hit Sune (Agbuke) in her sweet spot, which is at the free-throw line,” said Johnson, a Baylor junior.
Logic countered with the sixth triple-double of her career - 13 points, 10 rebounds and 14 assists. She wasn't impressed with it.
'I'm not going to think about that too much,” she said. 'I wanted to win so bad.
'We didn't play well enough to win tonight, but we battled.”
Logic's final moments in an Iowa uniform got her that triple-double, but it was simply Logic being Logic.
Her final assist - she ended her career with 898 of them in a school-record total that won't be broken for a long, long time - went to Melissa Dixon, who drained a 3-pointer.
Her 10th and final rebound came with 8 seconds left, diving for the ball, with the outcome decided.
'I was doing it for the whole team,” she said. 'They're going to be part of my life for my whole life. I'm just happy to go out with my team, do battle with this team. I wouldn't pick anyone else.”
Logic called Johnson 'the leader of that team, great passer, great leader on the floor, conducts that offense really well, puts her team in a position to win, and I think any day you're going to take that win over any other stat.”
Both teams came into the game averaging about 80 points per game. The Lady Bears got there again Friday. The Hawkeyes came up short.
'We knew that if they scored 80 points, we weren't going to win,” said Baylor's Sune Agbuke, who scored a career-high 23 points. 'We knew that we could score and we weren't going to have any trouble with that, but we did have to limit their 3-pointers and limit their transition buckets, and that's what we did.”
The Lady Bears shadowed Dixon, the nation's most prolific 3-point shooter, holding her to a pair of treys in 10 attempts. Ally Disterhoft managed just one basket in eight tries.
l Comments: (319) 368-8857; jeff.linder@thegazette.com
Iowa guard Samantha Logic (22) slips between Baylor's Niya Johnson (2) and Sune Agbuke (22) during the second half of Friday's NCAA women's basketball regional semifinal Chesapeake Energy Arena in Oklahoma City. Logic posted the sixth triple-double of her career (13 points, 10 rebounds, 14 assists), but Johnson countered with 10 points and 16 assists (and no turnovers) in Baylor's 81-66 win. (Cliff Jette/The Gazette)

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