No. 1 MBB Drops Home Contest Against Oklahoma State

Saturday, January 15

Waco, Texas

4 PM

Baylor

15-2,3-2Big 12

Oklahoma State

9-7,2-3Big 12

Oklahoma St.

Baylor

No. 1 MBB Drops Home Contest Against Oklahoma State

1/15/2022 6:22:00 PM | Men's Basketball

Box Score

LJ Cryer Led the Bears with 18 Points

By Jerry Hill
Baylor Bear Insider
            Playing its third road game in five days, Oklahoma State looked anything but weary or fatigued, jumping out to a double-digit lead in the first six minutes and playing suffocating defense from opening tip to final buzzer.
            Even when top-ranked Baylor whittled an 18-point deficit to one, the visiting Cowboys came up with three stops in the last 30 seconds to pull out a 61-54 win Saturday before a Ferrell Center crowd of 8,861.
            "I thought the guys did a good job fighting back, but that probably makes it even that much tougher now," said Baylor head coach Scott Drew, whose team fell to 15-2 overall and 3-2 in conference. "When you're down (18), you don't want your guys folding. But then, when you come back and have a chance to win, it even stings worse."
            Oklahoma State (9-7, 2-3), beating a No. 1-ranked team on the road for the first time in school history, handed the Bears their second-straight loss at home. After losing to the Cowboys, 83-74, in last year's Big 12 tournament semifinals, Baylor reeled off 21-straight wins before falling to 19^th-ranked Texas Tech, 65-62, Tuesday night.
            "For those guys to show the resilience and determination and courage to come out and play with the amount of energy that was required . . . if we play with any less energy, we lose the game," said OSU head coach Mike Boynton. "That was the ultimate team win. I couldn't be more proud to be their coach today."
            Already playing without 6-9 freshman Jeremy Sochan, who's missed the last two games with a sprained left ankle, the Bears also got limited minutes from point guard James Akinjo. Dealing with a lower back injury after a fall in the Tech game, he sat out the last 9:49 and finished with three points, missing seven of eight shots.
            "That obviously affected him," Drew said. "We didn't think he was going to play today, and he gutted it out. But that, obviously, wasn't the same James. In this league, everyone's banged-up, and you only have so much margin for error. We've got to get him and Jeremy back. And in the meantime, figure out a better way to put guys in positions to be successful."
            With Baylor missing 18 of its first 22 shots, OSU scored eight unanswered points and went up 29-11 with 4:51 left in the first half on a short jumper by Isaac Likekele. The Bears missed 10 of their first 11 shots from 3-point range.
            "It was very difficult," said sophomore guard LJ Cryer, who hit four 3-pointers and scored a team-high 18 points. "We dug ourselves a big hole like that, and it makes it super-hard to come back and win."
            Hitting four of its next nine shots and scoring 11 points in the last 4 ½ minutes, Baylor closed the gap to 34-22 by intermission despite shooting just 26% from the floor.
            Nine minutes into the second half, the hill was even steeper, with Bryce Thompson making a floater to put the Cowboys up 46-29.
            Starting a 25-9 run with back-to-back 3-pointers by Mayer and Cryer, the Bears got it back to a single-possession game with another trey by Mayer and cut it to a one-point deficit, 55-54, with 1:20 left.
            Even though Baylor turned it over twice in the last 30 seconds, Boynton said the "play of the game" was a hustle play by Rondell Walker when he tipped the ball away from Kendall Brown from behind and then saved it inbounds.
            "That was a huge momentum shift at the moment," Boynton said. "I felt it shifting a little bit, and that was a Rondel Walker play. And we haven't seen enough of that. I hope that's a spark for him moving forward."
            The Bears had the ball with a chance to take its first lead since the 17:30 mark of the first half, but Adam Flagler lost the ball on a drive through the lane and then turned it over again when Thompson stole a kick-out pass to Dale Bonner.
            A sophomore transfer from Kansas, Thompson hit four-straight free throws and then put the exclamation point on it with a dunk in the last seconds of the game. OSU's only double-figure scorer, Thompson hit 7-of-15 from the floor and finished with a game-high 19 points.
            Cryer and Mayer led Baylor with 18 and 16 points, respectively, while Brown had four points, seven rebounds, three assists and two steals.
            "As long as we've got guys out, we're going to have to tweak and do some things differently, obviously," Drew said, "because you've got guys playing different positions, different roles, and how can we generate offense?"
            Baylor goes back on the road for its next two games, facing West Virginia (13-3, 2-2) at 4 p.m. Tuesday in Morgantown and then Oklahoma (12-5, 2-3) next Saturday, Jan. 22, in Norman. The Mountaineers had a two-game winning streak snapped with an 85-59 loss to No. 9 Kansas, while the Sooners lost in overtime at TCU, 59-58.