DURHAM, N.C. (AP) — Taliah Scott scored 15 points and Baylor rallied from a nine-point deficit in the fourth quarter, making 11 of 14 free throws down the stretch, to beat Nebraska 67-62 on Friday in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.
After leading 19-11 after the first quarter, the sixth-seeded Bears (25-8) went cold and were down 50-41 with 9:33 to play in their March Madness opener. Baylor then turned up the full-court press and forced six turnovers by Nebraska in the final quarter.
“I thought that we got tough at the end,” Baylor coach Nicki Collen said. “When time was running out, I thought that’s about as tough a five minutes as we’ve ever played. It was our defense. It was our intensity. Our ball pressure in the full court, we turned it up. So a really hard-fought battle against a really good team. Happy to survive and advance.”
The turning point came on a jump ball with the game tied at 53 with 3:48 to play. Collen appealed for officials to review the play for a flagrant foul on Nebraska junior forward Jessica Petrie, who appeared to have pulled down Baylor’s Bella Fontleroy.
Baylor won the appeal, and Scott made two free throws to give Baylor the lead for good. Petrie, who had 10 points for the Cornhuskers, fouled out on the next play.
“I definitely think it flipped the game on its head a little bit,” Fontleroy said about the foul. We had energy, we had a few really good stretches, but that just gave us a little extra cushion. We really continued to be aggressive and compete after that and finish the game strong.
Collen said her coaching staff was confident the foul would be called after watching the video replay on a tablet, so she was willing to risk a timeout for the appeal.
“I thought the importance could be the momentum shift,” she said. “So the worst thing that was going to happen to us was we were going to get the ball. But we got the ball, the possession arrow stayed ours, and we ended up with a three-point possession.”
Nebraska coach Amy Williams said the call could have gone either way.
“We’ll watch some of the men’s tournament for the next several days, and we’ll see that type of play happen many, many times,” Williams said. “I thought Jess was just doing her best to be aggressive and to try to protect the ball. It was a physical game, and there was a lot of contact. It was an unfortunate circumstance that ended up kind of shifting a little bit of the momentum.”
Darianna Littlepage-Buggs scored 13 points for Baylor. Jana Van Gytenbeek added 12, including two critical 3-pointers in the second half.
Britt Prince had 27 points for the 11th-seeded Cornhuskers (26-8), who fell short in trying to become only the second team to advance from the First Four to the second round since the women’s field was expanded to 68 teams in 2022.
After making three consecutive NCAA Tournaments, Williams said the program’s goal is to play at home in the postseason next season.
“We’ve got to put ourselves in position to be hosting,” she said. “That’s kind of the next steps. We want the returning players in our program to be talking about playing games like this in Pinnacle Bank Arena next year in Lincoln and what do we need to do in the off-season to make that happen.”
Baylor will play Sunday against third-seeded Duke, which beat Charleston 81-64 in the earlier game.
The Bears beat the Blue Devils 58-52 in their Nov. 3 season opener. They both will enter Sunday’s game with identical 25-8 records after Duke rebounded from a 3-6 start.
“I think Duke was elite when we played them, and I think they’re elite now,” Collen said. “I think we maybe didn’t quite know who we were yet.”
AP March Madness bracket: https://apnews.com/hub/ncaa-womens-bracket and coverage: https://apnews.com/hub/march-madness
Baylor's Taliah Scott, right, and Darianna Littlepage-Buggs, left, celebrate after drawing a foul against Nebraska during the second half in the first round of the NCAA college basketball tournament Friday, March 20, 2026, in Durham, N.C. (AP Photo/Ben McKeown)
Nebraska's Jessica Petrie, left, and Baylor's Bella Fontleroy, right, battle for a loose ball during the second half in the first round of the NCAA college basketball tournament Friday, March 20, 2026, in Durham, N.C. (AP Photo/Ben McKeown)
Baylor's Yuting Dent, left, leaps over Nebraska's Britt Prince, right, as they battle for a loose ball during the first half in the first round of the NCAA college basketball tournament, Friday, March 20, 2026, in Durham, N.C. (AP Photo/Ben McKeown)
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is going ahead with new double-digit tariffs on dozens of U.S. trading partners just as the clock runs out Friday on stopgap levies he imposed after a stinging defeat at the Supreme Court.
The United States will slap taxes of 10% to 12.5% on imports from 60 trading partners accounting for 99% of U.S. imports, charging that they have inadequately enforced bans on goods produced by forced labor.
“The United States has had a forced labor import ban for nearly a century, and rigorously enforces it; it’s well past time for our trading partners to do the same,” said U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer.
The new tariffs will take effect just as temporary 10% worldwide tariffs expire at 12:01 a.m. Friday. Trump had turned to those temporary levies after the Supreme Court struck down his biggest and boldest tariffs in February.
Now he's tapping more durable tariffs under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, which permits the president to impose import taxes and other sanctions against countries found to engage in “unjustifiable,” “unreasonable” or “discriminatory” trade practices. Trump used Section 301 to impose big tariffs on China in his first term, and they survived court challenges.
More Section 301 tariffs are likely coming: The U.S. Trade Representative’s office has launched a probe into whether 16 countries — accounting for 70% of U.S. imports — have overproduced goods, pushing down prices and putting U.S. companies at a disadvantage in global markets. The administration has yet to complete that investigation.
Trump, who argues that high tariffs will revive American manufacturing, last year overturned decades of U.S. policy that favored lower tariffs and ever-freer trade. Invoking the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA, he imposed double-digit tariffs on imports from almost every country on Earth, saying America’s longstanding trade deficit amounted to a national emergency.
But the Supreme Court ruled that IEEPA did not authorize tariffs. The decision forced the administration to pay refunds to importers that had paid the tariffs.
In response, Trump announced 10% worldwide tariffs under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974. But he can only use Section 122 levies for 150 days; time runs out on them Friday.
The administration initially proposed the forced labor tariffs last month. Since then, some countries have tightened forced labor enforcement and qualified for lower tariffs, said a senior administration official who spoke under condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly on the matter. For example, the official said, the tariff on imports from India initially was set at 12.5% but now will be 10%.
Some products — including oil and gas and fertilizer — are exempted from the new tariffs announced Thursday. Also being spared are products that qualify for duty-free status under the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement, the North American trade pact Trump negotiated in his first term.
The tariffs drew immediate fire from critics.
“Today’s forced labor justification is too convenient to be taken seriously,” said U.S. Rep. Richard Neal of Massachusetts, the top Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee. “Forced labor is a real and pervasive problem in our supply chains and demands serious enforcement. It should never be cheapened into a pretext for a tariff policy built on dubious legal theories and personal grievances.''
Brazil, which faces a 12.5% forced-labor tariff, called the U.S. move “arbitrary and unjustified” in a statement. It plans to trigger its reciprocity law — which could call for retaliatory tariffs on the United States — and take a complaint to the World Trade Organization. The United States, the Brazilian government said, “chose to manipulate an issue of great importance to human rights and the struggles of workers worldwide in order to accuse 59 countries and the European Union of unfair practices.”
Chile's Undersecretary for International Economic Relations Paula Estévez said that the country has “solid labor institutions, a robust regulatory framework and a firm commitment to the prevention and eradication of forced labor.” Chile faces a 12.5% rate.
“The Government of Chile considers that the application of this measure to our country is inconsistent with these standards, as well as with the technical, political, and legal background presented throughout the investigation process,” she said.
Tariffs are paid by companies in the United States that import foreign products. The importers usually try to pass along the cost by charging consumers higher prices. Americans are already frustrated by the high cost of living. So the administration is taking a risk in rolling out new tariffs ahead of the Nov. 3 midterm elections.
Human rights watchers say that it’s reasonable to be skeptical of the motivation behind the tariffs. But they say the levies could make an impact on the problem of forced labor.
The tariffs are being imposed on countries that the U.S. found either failed to impose or failed to effectively enforce a ban on importing goods made with forced labor.
Forced labor is defined by the International Labor Organization Forced Labor Convention of 1930 as “all work or service which is exacted from any person under the menace of any penalty and for which the said person has not offered himself (or herself) voluntarily.”
According to the latest statistics from the ILO, which is a U.N. agency focused on human and labor rights, about 27.6 million people were in forced labor worldwide on any given day in 2021.
“We’ve gone on record for years now advocating for import bans, not as a magic bullet, it’s not a silver bullet, but as a potentially effective tool in combating forced labor across the globe,” said Martina Vandenberg, founder and president of The Human Trafficking Legal Center.
“It’s possible to be extremely critical of tariffs, as we are, and to be very concerned about blanket tariffs used as bludgeons against countries,” she said. “And yet I think it’s undeniable that there is a significant response in terms of the adoption of import bans.”
However, Vandenberg and her organization urged in testimony that the tariffs be implemented in a phased approach to give countries time to implement a ban or a plan for enforcement.
“Our concern is that the import bans will be thin slips of paper with no enforcement,” she said. “Countries need time to build import ban mechanisms that are meaningful and enforceable.”
In a statement, Dominic LeBlanc, the Canada-U.S. Trade Minister, said the move “is not unexpected.”
LeBlanc said Canada shares the U.S.’s objective of ensuring that goods produced with forced labor don’t enter the supply chain.
“We will continue engaging constructively with the United States on this matter, as well as other outstanding issues, over the coming weeks to the mutual benefit of our citizens,” LeBlanc said.
Kenya Davis, partner at Boies Schiller Flexner, said the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, a U.S. federal law passed in 2021 that prohibits the importation of goods made wholly or in part in China’s Xinjiang region or by designated entities, is the most significant legislation related to forced labor that the U.S. has passed before the tariffs.
“The level of effectiveness is certainly up for debate, but it certainly has drawn attention to the issue of labor trafficking and forced labor,” she said. “And so, if nothing else, these import bans will serve that function of bringing greater awareness to forced labor.”
But without a “comprehensive approach” that provides transparency about what the investigations consisted of, and programs that provide countries aid in enforcing bans, “I’m very cautious in my enthusiasm about the (tariffs),” she said.
Isabelle Glimcher, senior research scientist for global labor at the NYU Stern Center for Human Rights, said one flaw in the tariffs is that they focus on levying the tax on countries based on goods they import — not goods they make domestically.
But she said the impending tariffs threat has spurred several countries — such as India — to amend their foreign trade policies to include a forced labor import ban. European Union forced labor regulations due to go into effect later next year are also contributing, she said.
“Not all of these things are necessarily or wholly attributable to the Section 301 investigations, but does seem like countries are responding and starting to take all of this seriously,” she said.
Anderson reported from New York. AP Writers Nayara Batschke in Santiago, Chile, Mauricio Savarese in Sao Paulo and Jim Morris in Vancouver, Canada, contributed to this story.
President Donald Trump arrives with Los Angeles Dodgers manager Dave Roberts and owner Mark Walter for an event to honor the 2025 World Series champions Los Angeles Dodgers in the Rose Garden of the White House, Thursday, July 23, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
FILE - President Donald Trump speaks with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, right, at a working lunch with leaders of G7 and the Middle East in Evian-les-Bains, France, Tuesday, June 16, 2026. (Evelyn Hockstein/Pool Photo via AP,File)
FILE - President Donald Trump speaks during an event to announce new tariffs in the Rose Garden at the White House on April 2, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, File)
