The door was open.
As No. 2 Oregon acrobatics and tumbling watched from the sideline in Waco, Texas, No. 1 Baylor’s double slide-to-split pyramid crashed to the ground. A “risk,” as Bears head coach Felecia Mulkey called it on the halftime broadcast minutes later, didn’t pay off.
A 0.250-point deficit, then, was about as close as it could get — and as close as they would get — for the Ducks…