By Jerry Hill
Baylor Bear Insider
            HOUSTON, Texas – Playing in this very city nine months ago, the Baylor offense rolled up 668 yards in a 45-38 shootout win over Vanderbilt in the Texas Bowl. 
            This time, it took a stout defensive effort for the Bears (3-0) to pull out a 21-13 win over the Rice Owls Saturday night at Rice Stadium. 
            Led by linebacker Clay Johnston, safety Chris Miller and the defensive front trio of James Lockhart, James Lynch and Bravvion Roy, Baylor held the Owls to just 242 yards total and 64 on the ground. In a one-score game late in the fourth quarter, the defense came up with back-to-back sacks and three straight tackles behind the line to seal it. 
            "What I don't want lost in this is what a great effort from our defense," said Baylor coach Matt Rhule, whose team has won five in a row overall and nine straight against Rice. "They were put in a lot of bad situations and just kept going out there and answering the bell. The field was flipped the whole second half. And we got the big sack at the end of the game."
             Coming into this game, Rhule had talked about how his team hadn't had a four-quarter game. In blowout victories over SFA and UTSA the first two weeks, most of the starters were on the bench midway through the third quarter. 
            The Bears finally got the kind of test they needed . . . and passed, barely. 
            "There were probably some good things in there. Obviously not the game we wanted to play, but maybe something we needed to do," Rhule said. "I really believe this with all of my heart, we needed that game, we needed that experience."
            Even with a fumble, a missed field goal and a turnover on downs, the offense pretty much had its way in the first half, rolling up 326 yards and took a 21-3 halftime lead. 
            Sophomore receiver Josh Fleeks got the Bears on the board with a six-yard end-around run, then quarterback Charlie Brewer hooked up with Chris Platt for a 50-yard TD pass and capped the first-half scoring with a 25-yard TD run with 15 seconds left. 
            Despite being dominated for most of the first half, the Owls had a chance to make it a one-score when they recovered a John Lovett fumble at Baylor's 25. But, Lynch sacked quarterback Tom Stewart and forced a 44-yard field goal attempt that Chris Barnes missed. 
            It took Brewer just 29 seconds to drive the Bears 74 yards, capping it with his scrambling run. 
            "That would break a lot of teams," Rhule said of what amounted to a 14-point swing at the end of the half. "And I think what it did is it actually broke us a little bit. I think we went in and relaxed, and that's on me, completely my fault."
            The one constant for the Bears all night, though, was the defense. Rice had to settle for a pair of field goals on 55-yard drives that covered 13 and 14 plays and then came up empty on a fourth-quarter red-zone opportunity when linebacker Terrel Bernard stopped tight end Jack Baker two yards short on a fourth-and-10 play from the 13.   
                "In a weird way, this really was a good challenge, especially for the defensive side," said Lockhart, who had a tackle for loss, one sack, a pass breakup and two QB hurries. "We've been plahing 30 plays the first two games, so this was good way to get out and play a four-quarter game. I liked how the defense responded. Not satisfied, but we're starting to kind of get in a groove of playing four quarters of football."
            Lockhart, a fifth-year senior who transferred from Texas A&M two years ago, had arguably his best game as a Bear and unquestionably his best three-play sequence. With Rice near midfield, the defensive end deflected a pass on first down, dumped running back Aston Walter for a four-yard loss and then recovered a Cameron Montgomery fumble that was forced by Roy. 
            "It's kind of like basketball, once you kind of get in the groove of things, you get in the groove of things," Lockhart said. "To be honest, I don't even know what I did after the play. I was just like, 'OK, cool, line up, and just keep going.' We'll see it on film, but nine times out of 10 (my teammates) put me in great situations to make the play. I'm just thankful for them and for the defensive calls today."
            After a dominant first half, the Baylor offense managed just four first downs and 101 yards in the second half. And the bulk of that came on the Bears' first series, when Brewer hit Tyquan Thornton for a 44-yard pass down to the Rice 33. 
            Two plays later, Brewer had tight end Christoph Henle wide open down the middle, but lost the handle on the ball and fumbled it away. 
            "If we score there, we've got a chance to really be in the game," Rhule said. "That was disappointing that that happened, but the ball just slipped out of his hands. The (middle) linebacker was right in his face. After that, we just never really could manage it. . . We have to improve a lot of things as we move forward."
            Rice made it a one-score game with 8:42 left on a 21-yard QB keeper by Stewart and got the ball back with a chance to tie it up.         
            That's when the defense came to the rescue again, with a blitzing Miller dropping Walter for a two-yard loss, followed by back-to-back sacks by Lockhart and Lynch. The Owls had to punt it away and never got it back. 
            "They won us the game, so credit to them," said Brewer, who was 20-of-27 for 303 yards and one touchdown and another 58 yards on the ground. "If we hadn't put them in so many bad situations, it probably would have been a shutout. They played really good, we've just got to help them out. It starts with me, and I'll get everything corrected and make sure we have a good week of practice moving forward."
            Quiet for most of the second half, the offense came up with the final dagger when Brewer hit Denzel Mims for a 13-yard pass and first down that shut the door on any possible comeback. Mims finished with 102 yards on six grabs, giving the Bears a 100-yard performer in 18 of 28 games under Rhule. 
            "To be quite honest with you, you're going to have games like this, and good teams find a way to battle through those games," Rhule said. "I've had a lot of games like this where you just have to find a way to win. As I told our guys, don't apologize for winning. If this was back in 2017, we would all be jumping for joy in there right now. At the same time, understand that that's not going to be good enough to win a lot of these games moving forward."
            Baylor returns home to host Iowa State (2-1) in the Big 12 opener at 2:30 p.m. next Saturday in a game that will be televised by ESPN. The Cyclones are coming off a 72-20 blowout of UL Monroe, rolling up 718 yards total offense. 
            "This was a wake-up call for the older guys, too," said Johnston, who racked up a game-high 13 tackles for his eighth career double-digit tackle game. "We just have to keep a good head on our shoulders. We can't overlook opponents."