TAMPA, Fla. — Kim Mulkey’s intensity can be as brash as the color of her sideline suits. At times, the Baylor coach challenges her players with a ferocity that just might set one of her blaze-orange jackets on fire.

“I’m just really challenging them and getting on them,” Mulkey said. “In the middle of it, DiDi will go, ‘You tell ’em, Mulkey.’ You know, she’s got that little voice. She just cracks everybody up.”

DiDi Richards, the team’s court jester, is also its most dogged defender. In the N.C.A.A. women’s basketball tournament she has added another element to her game: clutch scorer.

With all the focus on Baylor’s post players — the 6-foot-7 Kalani Brown and the 6-foot-4 Lauren Cox — the national championship game against Notre Dame on Sunday just might be decided by the spindly arms of Richards, a 6-foot-1 sophomore.