OKLAHOMA CITY -- Victoria Vivians led Mississippi State in scoring average this season, while Baylor's Alexis Jones was second on her team in that statistic. But when Sunday's Elite Eight game begins at Cheasapeake Energy Arena, both guards could be on the bench. Or ... neither could. Both might make a huge difference. Or ... neither could.
That's one of the intriguing things about this game: There are a lot of moving parts, so to speak, in the matchup between the No. 1 seed Lady Bears and the No. 2 Bulldogs. That's because both teams are deep, and while there are players you expect will have major impacts, it could be someone else entirely who makes the difference.
"My biggest challenge as a coach this year was, with this much depth, to make sure I have right people on the floor at the right time," Baylor's Kim Mulkey said. "There's no perfect answer. It's just the feel of the game, what's working."
Vivians, a 6-foot-1 junior, had started every game of her Bulldogs career until this NCAA tournament began. Then she and three other usual starters went to the bench. Only point guard Morgan William retained her starting role.
Coach Vic Schaefer was trying to spark something with his team, and it seems to have worked. Mississippi State is in the Elite Eight for the first time in program history.
One might suggest Schaefer has been playing with fire, though, shaking up the starting lineup at this time of the year. His friend, Washington coach Mike Neighbors, had a different take.
"When you can do what Vic did going in to the NCAA tournament, you've got your team," Neighbors said after his No. 3 seed Huskies fell 75-64 to the Bulldogs in the regional semifinals Friday. "They have responded. Now you've got a team that's really, really deep. I think he knows his team as well as any coach in the country, to be able to push that button, take that type of risk."
The Mississippi State players have said all the right things about this. But it remains to be seen whether the Bulldogs' success with the new starting lineup works against a team with as many options as Baylor. Or if Schaefer might change the starting lineup again.
After the Lady Bears beat Louisville 97-63 in Friday's semifinals, Cardinals coach Jeff Walz was asked to compare Baylor now to the 2013 squad his team upset in the Sweet 16 in Oklahoma City.
"I think they're deeper," Walz said. "I don't see anybody on the team that's the caliber of Brittney Griner. I think she's a once-in-a-lifetime player to come through. Odyssey Sims was pretty darn good, too.
"But I think five, six, seven and eight on this year's ballclub, you have to guard them all. It makes it much more difficult when they can put five on the floor that can score."
Kalani Brown has led Baylor in scoring (15.1 PPG) and rebounding (8.2 RPG) this season, and on Sunday will go against something pretty rare: an opponent as tall as her. Mississippi State's Teaira McCowan is also a 6-foot-7 sophomore, and she had an amazing fourth quarter against Washington, finishing with 26 points, 12 rebounds, and 6 blocks.
Brown is from Louisiana and McCowan from Texas, and they played against each other a bit in AAU ball. Brown figures that against Mississippi State, she'll likely be double-teamed less, but, "Getting my shot over her length is probably going to be the biggest challenge."
More length from Baylor comes from 6-4 Beatrice Mompremier, who combined with Brown for 26 points and 25 rebounds against Louisville. Yet neither was Baylor's top scorer Friday; that was senior forward Nina Davis with 21 points.
And as for Jones, she went out Feb. 20 with a bone bruise and didn't return until the start of the NCAA tournament. In these three NCAA games, Jones has averaged 6.6 points and 3.3 assists in 17.3 minutes.
That's down from her averages of 13.9 points and 4.8 assists in 27.8 minutes before she was hurt. Still, Mulkey said she is pleased with Jones and how she can help starting point guard Kristy Wallace.
"Certainly going to need her for ballhandling with the pressure that Mississippi State brings," Mulkey said of Jones. "Kristy is good, but she's going to need a breather every now and then."
We haven't even mentioned another Baylor guard, Alexis Prince, who is having a strong senior season and averaging 12.2 points per game. She scored 14 against Louisville.
So this is what Mississippi State must face: A Baylor team averaging 89.6 points per game, with personnel whom the Bulldogs think is comparable to their SEC rival South Carolina. The Gamecocks defeated Mississippi State twice this season.
But one of those games was decided by three points at South Carolina, and the other was the SEC tournament final, which was close until the Gamecocks surged in the fourth quarter and the Bulldogs' offense evaporated.
If Vivians is on her game -- either coming off the bench or as a starter -- the Bulldogs' offense can be much harder to deal with. She is averaging 16.1 points per game and said she has adjusted to whatever role Schaefer wants her in.
"Watching your teammates play, you know what you have to do and fix what's broken," said Vivians, who had 13 points on 6-of-16 shooting against Washington. As for addressing her individual performance, Vivians said there's nothing truly broken that's caused her to have some scoring trouble over the past few weeks. But she has gone back to fundamentals in trying to figure out how to regain her momentum.
"I look at every shot that I shoot," she said of checking video. "Is it coming out right? Left? Is it short? Long? Am I shooting from the palm of my hands? If I keep trying to get back into a rhythm, they're going to fall."
Ultimately, though, the Bulldogs don't want to get into an offensive battle, since they average 76.3 points per game, 13.3 points less than Baylor. When Schaefer was a defensive-specialist assistant at Texas A&M in 2011, the Aggies beat then-No. 1 seed Baylor 58-46 with a grind-it-out game in the Elite Eight. Texas A&M went on to win the national championship.
Mississippi State has never been this far before. Baylor has gone to the women's Final Four three times and won the NCAA title twice. But the Lady Bears have been stopped in the Elite Eight the past three seasons.
"It's not a secret what our goal has been all four years I've been in college," Davis said. "We've been granted another opportunity."