By Jerry Hill
Baylor Bear Insider
            Famed screen writers Quentin Tarantino and Woody Allen have nothing on this Baylor basketball team. The second-ranked Bears seem to find a way to flip the script from night to night and game to game. 
            On a rare night when only one of the five starters scored in double figures, it was the bench that came through this time. Matthew Mayer and Adam Flagler combined to hit five 3-pointers and score 31 points as Baylor (10-0, 3-0) remained unbeaten with a 76-61 win over the visiting Oklahoma Sooners (6-3, 2-2) Wednesday night at the Ferrell Center. 
            "Each and every night, the luxury we have is we have different guys that can get going," said Baylor coach Scott Drew, who surpassed his father, Homer Drew, with is 372^nd Division I victory. "Sometimes, matchups benefit you based on who's playing well. . . . Matt was just rolling tonight."
            While Mayer had the hot hand in the first half, hitting all four of his shots and scoring nine of his season-high 16 points, Flagler bounced back from a scoreless game against Iowa State to nail five of his six second-half shots and finish in double figures for the sixth time in his eight games with 15 points. 
            "The bench mob, I guess you could say, we definitely pride ourselves on coming in and providing that spark," Flagler said. "Whoever is coming off the bench, we just try to compete at a high level and give us an edge."
            In a game filled with runs, Baylor couldn't have asked for a better start. MaCio Teague scored eight of his team-high 17 points in the first four minutes, draining a pair of 3-pointers and a short jumper, as the Bears got out to a stunning 16-2 lead. 
            "Us coaches now that there is no safe lead in the Big 12," Drew said. "Look at West Virginia the other night, Oklahoma State was up 19 with 11 minutes to go. We've had big leads and lost them, and we've been down big and come back. The tough thing is you fight human nature when you get a big lead. You think and assume things are going to be easy, and in the Big 12 they're not."
            Despite a dismal first half that saw the Sooners score their fewest points in a half this season (25) and hit just 1-of-15 from outside the arc, they certainly didn't go down easily. After Kur Kauth's second dunk in a difficult stretch for the Baylor defense, whittling the lead to 28-23, Drew called a time out. 
            "Basketball is such a game of momentum and spurts," Drew said. "Sometimes, you just need to get a time out, get something to drink, recalibrate and then come back a little more focused. I thought we did that. And then, our substitutions, obviously, gave us new energy, new life."
            Finishing with a 40-9 edge in bench points, Baylor's reserves scored all but one point in a 14-2 run in the last five minutes of the first half that stretched the lead out to 42-25. Providing instant offense, Mayer hit back-to-back buckets in a stretch of 33 seconds, and then Jonathan Tchamwa Tchatchoua got a dunk off an assist from Jared Butler that capped the run. 
            "My coaches have done a great job helping me figure out what is the most efficient stuff for me," Mayer said. "I'm a good 3-point shooter, but we've I'm (also) efficient attacking the rim and pitching it to other guys. So, that's what I try to focus on. If they're giving it to me wide open, I've got to take it."
            Freshman LJ Cryer, who didn't even play in Saturday's game at Iowa State, hit a 3-pointer in that run at the end of the first half and didn't turn it over in nine minutes of floor time. 
            "The great thing is we've got depth," Drew said. "LJ came in and gave us a great spurt, and we trust him. That group that really got us that separation at the end of the first half was critical, just like the starters in the beginning of the first half to get us that separation."
            OU did manage to cut into the deficit, getting within single digits on a jumper by Brady Manek, who scored all 10 of his points in the second half after hurting his back in a hard fall early in the game. 
            But in the blink of an eye, the Bears reeled off 10 unanswered points and pushed the lead back to 62-43. Teague and Flagler nailed back-to-back 3-pointers and then Flagler hit a floater that gave Baylor its biggest lead of the night. 
            "Second half, you knew they were going to make more shots, because they're too talented," Drew said of the Sooners, who came into the game as the league's No. 2 scoring team behind Baylor. "I thought we did a great job at answering their runs in the second half and never really letting them get in that area where you get a lot more nervous."
            Besides Teague, who was 4-of-6 from 3-point range and 6-of-11 overall, Baylor's other four starters were a combined 7-of-25 from the floor and scored 19 points. But, the Bears dominated the boards, 41-30, and doubled up OU on second-chance points, 16-8. 
            Austin Reaves finished with a game-high 19 points for the Sooners (6-2, 2-2), but was just 2-of-9 from outside the arc. Coming off a 29-point performance in an upset win over West Virginia that netted him Big 12 Player of the Week honors, Waco native Umoja Gibson missed all seven of his shots from the floor and scored just five points. 
            Baylor won its school-record 10^th consecutive game by double digits and beat Oklahoma for the sixth-straight time in a series the Sooners once dominated, winning 30 in a row. 
            The Bears go back on the road to face TCU (9-3, 2-2) at 2 p.m. Saturday in Fort Worth in a game that will be televised by ESPN.