Baylor
West Virginia
No. 5 MBB Heads for Tuesday Matinee at West Virginia
1/17/2022 12:17:00 PM | Men's Basketball
Bears Boast a 12-8 Mark All Time Against The Mountaineers
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#5/6 BAYLOR BEARS (15-2, 3-2) Location: Waco, Texas Conference/Affiliation: Big 12 Head Coach: Scott Drew (Butler, 1993) Roster | Stats | Game Notes (PDF) |
rv/rv WEST VIRGINIA (13-3, 2-2) vs. #5/6 BAYLOR (15-2, 3-2) Jan. 18, 2022 • 4:00 p.m. CT Morgantown, WV • WVU Coliseum (14,000) LIVE STATS: Stat Broadcast WATCH: ESPN2 Talent: Rich Hollenberg (pxp), Jay Bilas (analyst) LISTEN: Learfield/ ESPN 1660 AM in Central Texas Talent: John Morris (PBP), Pat Nunley (Analyst) SIRIUS XM: Sirius 137, XM, 199, Internet 953 Baylor Social Media:    |
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rv/rv WEST VIRGINIA (13-3, 2-2) Location: Morgantown, WV Conference/Affiliation: Big 12 Head Coach: Bob Huggins (West Virginia, 1977) Roster | Stats | Game Notes |
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By Jerry Hill
Baylor Bear Insider
Jonathan Tchamwa Tchatchoua wants to see fifth-ranked Baylor "be us and get back to playing the way we play."
"We just need to play with the same anger we've been playing with since the beginning of the season," said the 6-8 junior forward, who is averaging 7.9 points and a team-high 7.8 rebounds going into Tuesday's 4 p.m. CT game at West Virginia (13-3, 2-2). "Sharpen up our offense. Just make sure everything is really sharp when we run sets."
After five-straight weeks at No. 1, the Bears (15-2, 3-2) fell to fifth in the Associated Press and sixth in the coaches' poll following back-to-back losses at home to Texas Tech and Oklahoma State.
Freshman forward Jeremy Sochan (7.9 ppg, 5.9 rebounds) missed the last two games with a sprained left ankle, while senior point guard James Akinjo (13.9 ppg, 5.7 assists) was limited by a tailbone injury and went 0-for-7 against Oklahoma State.
"We're trying to see what James is going to be able to do in practice, and Jeremy the same thing," Baylor coach Scott Drew said. "I think the easiest thing in coaching is if you know what you have, you can come up with a plan. It's trying to come up with two and three plans, not knowing what you're going to have. With us, it's making sure you're able to get some reps with the other guys if it's Plan B or C."
The two losses were drastically different, with the Bears letting a 15-point first-half lead slip away in the 65-62 loss to Tech, then getting back within one after being down 18 in the 61-54 setback to OSU on Saturday.
"I think if we had lost by 20, definitely we would feel sorry for ourselves," Drew said. "But, the fact that we came back and had a chance to take the lead, you like that fight. I thought our fans really helped with that. At the same time, you didn't get over the hump."
The common denominator was points off turnovers. Tech scored 19 points off Baylor's 14 turnovers, then OSU got 18 points off 11 turnovers.
"We know fatigue makes cowards of us all. That leads to more turnovers," said Drew, who used seven- and eight-man rotations with Sochan out. "Last game, it was basically putting lineups out there that we haven't practiced. We were very ineffective shooting the ball for a vast majority of the game. Control what we can control, find out who we've got healthy and come up with a plan that can work."
West Virginia, which is 44th in the latest NET (NCAA Evaluation Tool) rankings, has been up and down in conference play after starting out 11-1. Sandwiched around homecourt wins over Kansas State and Oklahoma State, the Mountaineers lost by double digits on the road at seventh-ranked Kansas and No. 18 Texas Tech.
Bob Huggins, who is eligible for the 2022 class of the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame, ranks fourth all-time on the list of the winningest coaches in Division I with a 40-year record of 913-385. He passed Bob Knight and Roy Williams this year and is now just seven wins behind former UConn coach Jim Calhoun.
"Definitely a great team coached by a Hall of Fame coach," Tchamwa Tchatchoua said. "I know it's going to be a tough game. In the Big 12, every single game is going to be a hard-fought, one-possession game. We just need to cut out the self-inflicted wounds. We had a lot of those in the past two games, and I think we're just going to have to win that dogfight."
Baylor's backcourt rotation of Akinjo, Adam Flagler (12.1 ppg, 3.4 assists) and LJ Cryer (13.1 ppg) will be challenged by West Virginia's 1-2 attack of Taz Sherman (18.9 ppg) and Sean McNeil (14.3 ppg), who rank second and seventh, respectively, in the Big 12 in scoring.
"Obviously with Coach Huggins, they're going to be physical," Drew said. "And McNeil and Sherman are capable of putting up 30 at any given time. We've got to make sure we're getting shots and not turning it over. And if we're turning it over, hopefully they're not live-ball turnovers. The second thing would be defensively making sure we know the scouting report and we're more compact, making guys shoot over us instead of getting things at the rim."
Tuesday's matinee game at WVU Coliseum will be broadcast by ESPN2, with Rich Hollenberg and Jay Bilas calling the action.
"We're still 15-2," said senior forward Matthew Mayer (9.1 ppg, 4.9 rebounds), "so we know how to play and we'll figure it out."
Undefeated at 6-0 in games away from the Ferrell Center (3-0 in true road games), the Bears will play three of their next four games on the road. They travel to Oklahoma (12-5, 2-3) and Alabama (11-6) the next two Saturdays, with a home date against Kansas State (9-7, 1-4) next Tuesday.
STORY LINES
• No. 5 Baylor looks to bounce back at West Virginia after suffering consecutive losses for the first time in 1,038 days, snapping a streak of 76-consecutive games without back-to-back losses.
• The Bears return to Morgantown for the first time since clinching the first Big 12 Championship in program history with a 94-89 overtime win on March 2 last season at WVU Coliseum.
• Tuesday is the 21st series meeting, all in the last 11 seasons. Baylor is 12-8 all-time vs. WVU.
• Baylor has won 4 of the last 5 games vs. WVU, with the lone loss at WVU in 2019-20's final game.
• BU won its first 3 trips to Morgantown (2013-15), but is 2-4 in its last 6 trips (wins in 2019 & 2021).
• BU has won 12-consecutive games away from home – 9 neutral, 3 road (last loss March 12 vs. OSU).
• Baylor is 16-3 in Big 12 road games over the last 3 seasons (rest of league is 64-115 in B12 road games).
• BU is 30-1 vs. unranked teams over the last 2 seasons (+23.7 avg margin) with all wins by 5+ points.
• BU had the 3rd-longest winning streak in Big 12 history (21) snapped in Tuesday's loss to Texas Tech.
• BU went 305 days between losses, the longest in program history (March 12, 2021 – Jan. 11, 2022).
• Despite consecutive losses, Baylor is still No. 2 in KenPom and No. 5 in AP Top 25 and NCAA NET.
• Baylor's 31-6 Big 12 conference record over the last 3 seasons is the best of any Power-5 team.
• Baylor has been No. 1 ranked in 4 of the last 6 seasons (Gonzaga, Duke and Kansas are only others).
• For a second-straight season, Baylor was one of the nation's final two undefeated teams.
• Baylor's 43-4 record over the last 2 seasons is the nation's best among Power-5 teams, and the Bears' 69-8 record over the last 3 seasons is 2nd-best nationally, trailing only Gonzaga (75-5).
• Baylor's bench has out-scored the opponents' bench in 14 of 17 games and by an average of 28-20.
• BU is allowing only 6.6 second-chance points per game, while scoring 12.8 second-chance points.
• Baylor is the nation's only team ranked top-30 in scoring offense (26th) and scoring defense (19th).
• Baylor ranks top-25 nationally in scoring margin (4th, +20.0), assists (11th, 17.6), steals (16th, 9.6), rebounding margin (13th, +8.6), turnovers forced (18th, 17.5), turnover margin (17th, +4.8),
field goal percentage (25th, .481) and offensive rebound percentage (8th, 38.1).
• BU has forced 10+ turnovers in 25-straight games, including 12+ TOs in 16 of 17 games this season.
• BU's 48-straight weeks ranked in the AP Top 25 is the nation's 3rd-longest behind Gonzaga and Villanova.
• Baylor is on a school-record streak of 40-straight weeks top-10 ranked (top-5 ranked in 37 of those).
• Baylor has been ranked in all 25 spots in the AP Top 25 at some point in the last 7 years.
• Baylor has built leads of 11+ points in 22 of 23 games since the start of the 2021 NCAA Tournament.
• BU has built double-digit leads in 67 of 77 games over the last 3 seasons (43 of 47 last 2 seasons).
• Adam Flagler (Player of the Week) and James Akinjo (Newcomer of the Week) swept the Jan. 10 Big 12 weekly awards. It's the 7th time Baylor players have won both awards in the same week.
• BU has defeated 3 currently top-15 ranked teams this season – No. 11 Villanova (57-36 in Waco), No. 14 Michigan State (75-58 in Battle 4 Atlantis title game) and No. 15 Iowa State (77-72 in Ames).
• Drew has swept AP and coaches' Big 12 Coach of the Year honors each of the last two seasons.
QUICK HITS
• Baylor is the first program to start consecutive seasons 15-0 since Syracuse in 2010-11 and 2011-12.
• Head coach Scott Drew is in his 19th season at Baylor with a school-record 385 career victories, including a 17-8 mark in NCAA Tournaments, which is the 7th-best mark among active coaches.
• Baylor's streak of 18-straight wins by 8+ points was snapped in a 5-point win at Iowa State. BU was the first returning national champion to win its first 12 games by 8+ points since 1990-91 UNLV.
• Baylor has won 36 straight non-conference games (+23.2 average margin) dating back to Nov. 2019.
• BU ranks 8th nationally in KenPom's offensive rebound pct (38.1), its 8th-straight year ranked top-10.
• BU is playing its 296th game as a ranked team under Drew – BU was ranked in 2 of 2,197 games over the program's 97 seasons prior to Drew. Since January 2010, BU has been ranked in 280 of 417 games.
• Baylor and Kansas are the only Power-5 schools to win 18+ games every year since 2008.
• Baylor's streak of 9 consecutive postseasons is tied as the nation's 7th-longest active streak.
• Baylor has won 20+ games in 12 of the last 14 seasons after recording only three 20-win seasons in the previous 100 years of Baylor Basketball (1946, 1948, 1988).
• Baylor is 88-6 when leading at halftime over the last 5 seasons (58-3 over last 3 seasons, 24-0 last season).
• Baylor has won 90% of its games when leading at the half since 2011-12 (205-22).
• BU is 69-5 when leading at any point in the 2nd half of a game over the last 3 seasons.
• Baylor is 260-101 over the last 10+ seasons, averaging 24.5 wins per season since 2011-12.
• Baylor's 260 wins since 2011-12 are second-most in the Big 12 behind only Kansas (299).
• Baylor is 351-148 since 2007-08, the first year Drew's staff had a full allotment of scholarships.
• Five of Baylor's players have used or are currently using a redshirt year. Two after transferring to BU (Flagler, Tchamwa Tchatchoua), one before transferring (Bonner) and two as freshmen — Turner and Langston Love.
• Ten of Baylor's 11 starting point guards under Drew have earned All-Big recognition (16 of last 17 seasons).
• Baylor is 1 of 10 teams nationally to appear in every postseason since 2012 (7 NCAAs, 2 NITs).
• Baylor has the nation's 9th-longest active streak with at least one 3-point FG made in 979 straight games — the last time Baylor failed to make a 3-pointer was more than 30 years ago, on Feb. 21, 1990 vs. Texas Tech (0-8).
• BU is 7-1 all-time in Big 12/SEC Challenges, the best record of any team in either league. Combined with a 3-1 mark in the Big 12/Pac-10 Series and 1-0 in the Big 12/Big East Battle, Baylor is 11-2 in conference challenges.
• Baylor has won 8 tournament titles under Drew – 2007 Paradise Jam, 2011 Las Vegas Classic, 2013 NIT, 2016 & 2021 Battle 4 Atlantis, 2017 Hall of Fame Classic, 2019 Myrtle Beach Invitational and 2021 NCAA Championship.
BEARS MAKE BIG 12 HISTORY
• In the last three seasons, Baylor has recorded the longest winning streak in the Big 12 Conference's 26-year history (23 in 2019-20), the 3rd-longest in Big 12 history (21 in 2021-22) and tied the 5th-longest (18 in 2020-21).
LONGEST WINNING STREAKS IN BIG 12 HISTORY
1. 23 – Baylor, 2019-20
2. 22 – Kansas, 1996-97
3. 21 – Baylor, 2021-22
4. 20 – Kansas, 2007-08
T5. 18 – Baylor, 2020-21; Kansas 2016-17; Kansas 2012-13; Kansas, 2010-11
T9. 17 – Kansas 2015-16; Baylor 2011-12, Texas 2009-10
For full version of Baylor game notes, click here.
