Baylor to retire Brittney Griner’s No. 42

Baylor will honor program legend Brittney Griner with a jersey retirement ceremony on Feb. 18 at the Bears' new campus arena in Waco, Texas.

Griner's No. 42 will be retired when Baylor hosts Texas Tech at the newly opened Foster Pavilion that day.

"I'm honored to return home to Baylor and celebrate where so much of my journey started," Griner said Monday in a news release. "I'm grateful to Coach Nicki (Collen) and the entire Baylor community and am looking forward to the opportunity to be back on campus, spend time with the team and have my family beside me to share in this incredible moment. Sic ‘em Bears."

Griner, who starred on the Baylor team that went a perfect 40-0 in 2011-12 and won the national title, did not play for Collen, who took the reins of the program in 2021.

Kim Mulkey, now at LSU, coached Griner during her four years at Baylor (2009-13), but Mulkey insisted that players must have graduated from the university to be eligible for a number retirement. Griner went on to finish her degree in education in 2019.

"I have been saying this since I arrived at Baylor that she deserves to have her jersey retired and I wanted to make sure that happened when the timing was right," Collen said in a statement. "With the opening of Foster Pavilion, and the WNBA offseason fitting into our season, this seemed like the right time to honor Brittney and welcome her back home."

A two-time winner of the AP Player of the Year, the Wooden Award and the Naismith Award during her decorated Bears tenure, Griner has gone on to a productive WNBA career and helped the Phoenix Mercury win a championship in 2014.

Griner was imprisoned in Russia in February 2022 and held till December of year on a drug charge. The U.S. State Department held that she was "wrongfully" detained.