Baylor's Davis has big birthday game, as doodled

Published Dec. 9, 2014 7:47 p.m. ET

foxsports

WACO, Texas (AP) Nina Davis was doodling on the calendar of one of Baylor's strength coaches when she flipped forward a few months to her birthday.

On a break after a workout last summer, she wrote, ''Nina's birthday. I might score 50'' and added a smiley face. She clearly had the game at Mississippi, on her 20th birthday and the closest she will play to home this season, circled on the calendar.

''You did good, 43,'' coach Kim Mulkey told Davis on Tuesday, referring to the career-high number of points the 5-foot-11 sophomore scored in the ninth-ranked Lady Bears' 96-54 at Ole Miss months after her prediction.

Davis shot 14 of 17 and made 15 of 19 free throws before coming out of Sunday's game with just under 6 minutes left and Baylor ahead 81-48. It wasn't until later that the strength coach told Mulkey what Davis had written down.

''Had he told me that earlier, I might have let her get her prediction,'' Mulkey said, sharing a picture of the calendar from her phone. ''How scary is that?''

Davis played at Central High School in Memphis, about 80 miles from the Ole Miss campus.

''It felt like yesterday that I came and was sitting in coach Mulkey's office, and she promised that if I came here she'd get me a game close to home,'' Davis said Tuesday. ''She's a woman of her word, and she did. My city came down and supported me.''

Davis said she had more than 100 people there to see her play, including family, friends, old teachers, AAU coaches and 50-75 members of her church who came down on a bus.

''It was just one of those nights, one of those that you tell to your grandkids one day,'' Mulkey said. ''I went back home, my church was there, and I played in front of all these people that watched me grow up. She was really, really good.''