By Jerry Hill
Baylor Bear Insider
            After waiting 25 years to win their first Big 12 championship a year ago – and first conference title, period, since three-straight in the old Southwest Conference more than 50 years ago (1948-50) – the Baylor Bears didn't have to wait near as long this time. 
            Iowa State certainly didn't make it easy, rallying from a 25-point first-half deficit to take a late lead, but third-ranked Baylor (26-5, 14-4) scored nine-straight points and rode the hot hand of senior point guard James Akinjo to pull out a 75-68 win over the Cyclones (20-11, 7-11) Saturday night in the regular-season finale. 
            Most of the Ferrell Center crowd of 9,385 stuck around to watch the Bears celebrate their second-straight Big 12 championship with a confetti shower, cutting down the nets and chaplain Mark Wible praying over Akinjo and the team's other three seniors. 
            "You look at the beginning of the year, and we said that with everything we lost, what's impossible with man is possible with God," said Baylor coach Scott Drew, who lost four starters off last year's national championship team and two players this year to season-ending injuries. 
"That's been our theme. And with all the injuries and things we've had to overcome this year . . . you've got to really credit our guys for remaining calm and executing and really down the stretch being very efficient and helping pull out a win."
            After winning last year's Big 12 title with plenty of room to spare, Baylor had to share this one with sixth-ranked Kansas (25-6, 14-4), which beat No. 21 Texas in overtime, 70-63. The Jayhawks won at least a share of their 20^th conference title in the league's 26-year history and will be the No. 1 seed for next week's Big 12 Tournament in Kansas, Mo., by virtue of splitting two games with a third-seeded Texas Tech team that swept the Bears. 
            "I didn't know about Kansas," Drew said of a game that ended while the Bears were in the middle of a 22-0 run to jump out to a 29-4 first-half lead. "I'm not dumb, I figured if Texas would have won, there would have been an announcement or someone would have said congrats. But, I wasn't going to find out. I finally asked at the very end of the celebration."
            Freshman Jeremy Sochan scored 10 points in Baylor's 22-0 run with two dunks, a 3-pointer, a jumper and a free throw in a stretch that saw Iowa State miss 14-consecutive shots and fall behind by 25 when Adam Flagler hit a pair of free throws with 7:53 left in the first half. 
            "We came out a little bit on our heels, we were careless with the ball, we didn't have toughness on the glass," said Iowa State coach T.J. Otzelberger, whose team has had an 18-win improvement over last year's 2-22 finish. "If you're going to beat a great team like Baylor, especially on the road, you can't be in that hole."
            Iowa State, coming off a low-point 53-36 home-court loss to Oklahoma State, hit 11 of its last 14 shots to close the half on a 25-10 run. Gabe Kalscheur, who led the Cyclones with 18 points, drained a 3-pointer from the corner to make it a 10-point game, 39-29, going into the break. 
            "If you watch closely, they were running specific action that was giving us a lot of trouble," Akinjo said of Robert Jones getting loose for eight-straight points in an 85-second stretch that ended Iowa State's scoring drought. "They scored a lot on that action. Credit to them, they ran some great stuff."
            Even when the Bears seemed to slow down the Cyclone train – Flagler hit a 3-pointer that pushed the lead back to 51-38 – Iowa State came right back with a 7-0 run that made it a six-point game, 51-45, at the under-12 media timeout. 
            "That's sports. They say pressure bursts pipes or makes diamonds," Drew said. "We were making diamonds early, and then we were bursting the pipes. It's a roller-coaster ride. When I got into coaching, they said, 'Do you like the roller coaster or the merry-go-round?' Because if you're sports, you better be ready for the roller coaster."
            In a 20-minute stretch at the end of the first half and first 12 minutes of the second half, Iowa State hit 23-of-30 shots from the floor, outscored the Bears, 56-29, and went up 60-58 when Ajaz Kunc scored on a layup off an Akinjo turnover.
            "It's a game of momentum," Drew said. "You miss a free throw, then you miss another free throw, you miss a layup and then you turn it over and they hit a shot. Like I said, that's sports."
            With the game knotted at 62-62, freshman Kendall Brown blocked a dunk attempt by Jones at the 4:28 mark, sparking a 13-3 run by the Bears that put the game away. 
            "Yeah, I was going to get that one," said Brown, who recorded his third double-double of the season with 16 points and 10 rebounds. 
            "That was a huge block. That was an energy giver for the crowd and for us," said Akinjo, who finished with a game-high 20 points to go with six assists and two steals. "Credit Kendall for putting his reputation as a jumper on the line. It was redemption. In the first half, it didn't go that way, but he showed a lot of heart."
            Akinjo ended a 3 ½-minute scoring drought with a pull-up 3-pointer that gave the Bears the lead for good, then added a reverse layup off an offensive rebound and assist by Brown. Finishing off a 9-0 run, Akinjo fed brown for a short jumper in the lane, then Thamba hit two free throws that gave BU a 71-62 lead. 
            "That was a huge stretch for us," said Akinjo, who scored 13 of his 20 points in the second half. "We couldn't do it without getting stops. Once we got the stop, we wanted to come down and take the best shot possible. And I think we did. Credit to my teammates."
            Flagler and Sochan scored in double figures with 13 and 12 points, respectively, while Jones and Izaiah Brockington chipped in with 12 and 11 points, respectively, for the Cyclones.
            Baylor, down to a seven-man rotation with Jonathan Tchamwah Tchatchoua and LJ Cryer out with injuries, has won five in a row and seven of its last eight games. 
            "One of the things I had on my list was to be a winner," said Akinjo, who transferred to Baylor after previous stops at Georgetown and Arizona. "And I showed that I could do that playing with this group of guys. I'm just super happy. . . . This means a lot. I've been productive in other programs in scoring and assists, but I've never had a chance to win a conference championship and really win at a high level."
 The amazing thing is that Flagler, Thamba and Matthew Mayer are the only holdovers in that seven-man rotation. Akinjo and Dale Bonner were transfers, while Brown and Sochan are true freshmen. 
"Last year's team was a great team, but just being part of this new squad, there's a lot of different people," Brown said. "It's a great feeling to be back-to-back Big 12 champs."
            Seeded second for the Big 12 Tournament, Baylor will face seventh-seeded Oklahoma (17-14, 7-11) in the quarterfinals at 6 p.m. Thursday at the Sprint Center in Kansas City. Third-seeded Iowa State will face No. 3 seed Texas Tech (23-8, 12-6) in the late quarterfinal at 8:30.