By Jerry Hill
Baylor Bear Insider
            Facing a 15-point deficit 11 minutes into the game on the road against top-ranked Baylor, the Texas Tech Raiders could have easily "just folded up our tent and gone home."
            But, they didn't. 
            Buoyed by a 10-0 run in the last six minutes of the first half, the 19^th-ranked Red Raiders ratcheted up their defense to defeat the Bears, 65-62, Tuesday night at the Ferrell Center, snapping a national-best 21-game winning streak dating back to last year's NCAA Tournament run. 
            The last remaining unbeaten team after fifth-ranked USC was upset by Stanford just hours earlier, Baylor (15-1, 3-1) lost its first game since falling to Oklahoma State, 83-74, on March 12, 20212, in the Big 12 Championship semifinals. 
            "In the Big 12, every day we're going to get everybody's best shot," said junior forward Jonathan Tchamwa Tchatchoua, who had four points and a game-high 10 rebounds. "Our goal is to win the last game of the season, and we're going to learn from this."
            Falling behind by as many as seven, the Bears clawed back within one when Adam Flagler and James Akinjo hit 3-pointers. But, after Davion Warren hit both ends of a one-and-one for his only points of the game, Akinjo missed a forced 3-pointer at the buzzer that would have sent the game to overtime. 
            "There's a reason why they're top-20," Baylor coach Scott Drew said of Tech, which was coming off a 75-67 win over No. 6 Kansas just three days earlier. "They're a good team."
            First-year Tech coach Mark Adams, whose team improved to 12-3 overall and 2-1 in the Big 12, said his team "could have just quit in about that first 10 minutes."
            "They were putting it to us, built a big hole for ourselves, but the guys just hung around and kind of got back in at halftime," Adams said of the Red Raiders getting back within 31-26 by halftime. "And then, we were able to gain some momentum as the game went on. Just a lot of determination and grit and character."
            Coming out on fire, Baylor scored the first nine points of the game and went up, 24-9, with 9:10 left in the first half, when Flo Thamba got a putback after an offensive rebound. 
            Flagler's fourth 3-pointer of the opening half made it a 31-16 game, but the Bears turned it over four times and missed their next six shots in going scoreless over the last six minutes. 
            "You've got to give Texas Tech a lot of credit," Drew said. "I think the first 15 minutes, we did a great job, and then the last five minutes of the first half they finished on a great run and had momentum."
            Carrying that momentum over, the Red Raiders tied it up at 33-33 on a three-point play by Bryson Williams just a minute and half into the second half. 
            Still, Tech didn't take its first lead of the game until the 9:52 mark, when Clarence Nadolny made a free throw to put the Red Raiders on top, 47-46. The game went back and forth until Williams and Kevin McCullar drained 3-pointers in an 8-0 run that made it 59-52 with 2:39 left. 
            McCullar, who had missed the first two conference games with an ankle injury, came back in a big way with 12 points, six rebounds, five assists and three steals in 31 minutes. 
            "I thought them having Kevin back was the game-changer," Drew said. "He has experience and knows these game situations . . . I think he calmed them down. We jump early and he checked into the game and stabilized them. So, he was a big difference-maker for them."
            Flagler, who scored 17 points to share game-high scoring honors with Akinjo, hit a jumper in the paint and then drained a 3-pointer off an assist from Kendall Brown to get Baylor back within two, 59-57, with 1:43 left. 
            Scoring on five of its last seven possessions, Tech answered an Akinjo trey and a pair of free throws with Warren's game-clinching free throws with 19.4 seconds left. 
            The Red Raiders got balanced scoring with five double-figure scorers, led by Adonis Arms with 14 points, nine rebounds and five assists. Williams and Kevin Obanor had 13 points apiece, while Nadolny scored 11 points on 5-of-6 shooting from the floor. 
            Getting a third double-digit scorer from sophomore LJ Cryer, Baylor played its first game of the season without freshman Jeremy Sochan, who suffered a sprained left ankle in the first half of Saturday's 84-74 win over Oklahoma.
            "Jeremy does a great job moving the ball, he's a facilitator, he can score," Drew said of the 6-9 Sochan. "Defensively, he gives us a lot of size and length and really matched up well with Tech's size and length today. Just another body, another freshness. You miss anyone that you don't have. But, that's what happens in the Big 12. Some games, you have guys; some games, you don't."
            The Bears will finish off a two-game home stand, hosting Oklahoma State (8-6, 1-2) at 4 p.m. Saturday. OSU lost 70-60 at West Virginia Tuesday night after upsetting then-No. 14 Texas, 64-51, on Saturday in Stillwater.