No. 3 MBB Sweeps Away Texas With a 68-61 Win in Austin

Monday, February 28

Austin, Texas

8 PM

Baylor

25-5,13-4Big 12

Texas

21-9,10-7Big 12

Baylor

Texas

No. 3 MBB Sweeps Away Texas With a 68-61 Win in Austin

2/28/2022 10:42:00 PM | Men's Basketball

Box Score Final Book (PDF)

Adam Flagler and James Akinjo combine for 38 points in the victory

By Jerry Hill
Baylor Bear Insider
            AUSTIN – Texas coach Chris Beard desperately wanted to win the Longhorns' final game in the 45-year-old Frank Erwin Center Monday night.
            But, the third-ranked Baylor Bears had other plans.
            Coming back from a halftime deficit for the third-straight game, Baylor had a late 9-0 run and got 19 points apiece from Adam Flagler and James Akinjo to spoil 21^st-ranked UT's party, 68-61, before a sellout crowd of 16,450.
            "He's a winner," Baylor coach Scott Drew said of Akinjo, who hit a floater in the lane and a pair of free throws to cap the 9-0 run, then sealed it with two more free throws with 1:00 left. "Some players have a knack for big moments. I think Michael Jordan missed more shots than anybody, but he obviously closed more out than anybody. His best moments are usually at the end."
            Texas (21-9, 10-7), which will move to the 10,000-seat Moody Center next year, lost for the 12^th time in the last 13 meetings in this series and got swept in Beard's first season in Austin.
            The Bears (25-5, 13-4) recorded their fifth-straight win and seventh in their last eight to keep alive hopes of defending last year's Big 12 championship. Baylor moved into a virtual tie with sixth-ranked Kansas (23-5, 12-3), but the Jayhawks still have three to play while the Bears finish with a home game on Saturday against Iowa State.
            "Couldn't be prouder of our team for the resilience," said Drew, who was playing his fifth-straight game since Jonathan Tchamwa Tchatchoua's season-ending knee injury in the first game against Texas and is still missing sophomore guard LJ Cryer from the rotation.
"We're undefeated, 15-0, when we had everybody, then we had a plethora of injuries. The team stuck together and gave us time together as a staff to be successful. Shows a lot of leadership and courage from them."
            Texas' defense made things tough on Baylor's guards in the first half, holding Akinjo and Flagler to a combined seven points on 3-for-9 shooting from the field and 1-for-4 from 3-point range.
            "Give them credit, they did a good job of trapping the ball screens and really getting at our hands and not allowing the guards to come downhill," Akinjo said. "They also made some adjustments, but I think at halftime we saw what they were doing and adjusted to what they were doing."
            With Baylor going almost eight minutes without a field goal, Texas scored eight-straight points and went up 16-9 on an Andrew Jones layup with 8:30 left in the first half. The Bears hit seven of their last 11 shots in the half and trailed by just three at the break, 30-27.
            "That's the third-straight game we've trailed at half, so the pregame talks need to improve," Drew said.
            Just don't change the halftime speeches. They seem to be working just fine.
            As much as Akinjo and Flagler heated up in the second half, shooting better than 50% overall and 6-of-10 from outside the arc, the second half was about the Bears getting stops on the defensive end. The Longhorns shot 37.5% overall and 2-of-12 from 3-point range and gave up nine offensive rebounds.
            "It's really just getting stops and getting out in transition," said Flagler, who knocked down four 3-pointers and scored 16 of his 19 points in the second half. "Once we got stops, we were able to get easy baskets. They were denying, doing a lot of things in the first half making it tough. But, great teams make adjustments at halftime, and that's what we did."
            Flagler hit three 3-pointers and Akinjo added another one in a 14-5 Baylor run that saw the Bears turn a five-point deficit into a four-point lead, 49-45.
            "Guys like James, Dale (Bonner), Jeremy (Sochan) breaking guys down, and I just had to make the shots at the end of the day," Flagler said. "I got a lot of wide-open looks, so credit to them."
            Drew said that having two guards like Akinjo and Flagler "allows you to sleep at night."
            "Some games, they make shots, some they miss," Drew said. "And you feel confident with them leading you."
            After Christian Bishop tied it up at 54-54 with a shot in the lane, Baylor reeled off nine-straight points on back-to-back buckets by Flagler, an Akinjo 3-pointer and a pair of free throws by the Arizona grad transfer that gave the Bears the lead for good, 63-54.
            "When we've got guys like Flag and Kendall (Brown) that can get hot outside, it creates spacing and made it easier," Akinjo said.
            The Longhorns missed eight shots in a row and were just 3-for-12 over the last six minutes, falling behind by as much as 10 points, 68-58, when Sochan canned a pair of free throws with 51.8 seconds left.
            "Our defense the last couple of years has been really good," Drew said. "The reason is our bigs can really guard and are not a liability out there and can guard 1 through 5. Flo and Jon have done that, so that's a big reason we've done that."
            Akinjo added eight rebounds, seven assists and two steals, with Brown went 2-for-2 outside the arc and scored 12 of his 13 points in the first half. Thamba 12 points
            Brown was 2-for-2 from outside the arc and had 12 of his points in the first, keeping the Bears in the game while the rest of the team struggled to find points where they could make it. Thamba had 12 points, six rebounds and a block late in the game, while Sochan stripped Bishop on a play where he got the ball underneath and seemed to have a clear path for a dunk.
            Bishop and Marcus Carr led UT with 13 points apiece, with reigning Big 12 Newcomer of the Week Timmy Allen had 10 points and seven boards.
            Baylor returns home to host Iowa State (20-9, 7-9) at 5 p.m. Saturday at the Ferrell Center. The Cyclones host Oklahoma State on Wednesday before coming to Waco.