By Jerry Hill                                                                 
Baylor Bear Insider
            AUSTIN – Easily the Big 12's best road team over the last four years, the 11^th-ranked Baylor Bears were poised to pull out their fourth-straight Monday night at Texas' brand-new Moody Center.
            Similar to his late scoring spree in Saturday's 67-64 home-court win over Arkansas, freshman Keyonte George heated up late and brought the Bears back within one with a three-point play with 50.7 seconds left.
            But the Longhorns' Marcus Carr, who missed his first five shots in the second half, knocked down a tough pull-up jumper over LJ Cryer to help 10^th-ranked Texas (18-4, 7-2) pull out a 76-71 win and snap Baylor's six-game winning streak before a sellout crowd of 10,763.
            "I'm proud of the guys for fighting. It's a tough place to play, and the new facility is amazing," said Baylor coach Scott Drew, whose team fell to 16-6 overall and 5-4 in league play. "That's a top-10 team, that's a Big 12 game. It's great coaches, great players, and no one's packing up and going home when they get down. To win a road game, you've got to earn it, and we didn't earn it tonight."
            In a heat-check moment after scoring five points in less than a minute, George missed a deep 3-pointer that would have tied it after Carr's bucket, finishing with 17 points. Struggling against the length of 6-6 senior forward Timmy Allen, the 6-4 Baylor freshman guard was just 5-of-18 from the floor and 2-of-8 from outside the arc.
            "I wish I'd called a timeout with 17 or 18 seconds on that possession. That's on me," said Drew, whose team is 24-7 in conference road games over the last four seasons. "We took some bad 3's, and we don't go 8-for-26 on 3's if we take good ones. We've got really good shooters. My job is I've got to get them better shots. I give them better shots, and they'll make a higher percentage."
            Matching his season high with a game-high 21 points off the bench, New Mexico State transfer Sir'Jabari Rice hit a pair of free throws and then sealed it when he grabbed a rebound off a missed trey by Adam Flagler in the final seconds.
            "My brother (Grand Canyon head coach Bryce Drew) recruited him at GCU, and I know he's a heck of a player," Drew said of Rice. "I'm a fan of his, and I know what he's capable of. He really adds a great dimension to their team."
            Baylor also lost for just the second time in the last 14 meetings with the Longhorns, who also got 18 points, six rebounds and four assists from Allen and 13 points from Iowa State transfer Tyrese Hunter, the Big 12 Freshman of the Year last season.
            "We're not getting the shots we want. We're not getting good, better, best," said Cryer, who had 19 points and five rebounds, hitting 3-of-6 from 3-point range. "Right now, I guess we're taking good shots instead of great shots, and sometimes they're not even good shots. We've just got to do a better job of getting into the paint and finding each other."
            Trailing by nine late in the first half, the Bears went on a 10-2 run that included a 3-pointer by Flagler and buckets by Cryer, Jalen Bridges and freshman Josh Ojianwuna and were down by just two at the break, 38-36.
            "I thought the first half, we didn't execute and play like we're capable of until the last eight minutes or so," Drew said. "You can't start out on the road like that. That was disappointing."
            After Baylor tied it at 38-38 just 15 seconds into the second half on a Flo Thamba shot, the Longhorns reeled off eight unanswered points and never trailed after the 14:27 mark of the first half.
            While Rice hit four 3-pointers and scored 15 of his 21 points in the second half, George scored nine of his 17 points in the last 8 ½ minutes. After making a tough shot through contact, George converted a three-point play with a layup and follow free throw to make it a one-point game, 72-71, with 50.7 seconds left.
            But he took a 3-pointer less than 10 seconds into the possession after Carr's bucket, with Thamba fouling out on Rice's rebound with 16.9 seconds left.
            "They're long, they deny the ball, so it's hard to get open on cuts," Cryer said. "We can't let them dictate what we do. We've got to go out there and do what we do, regardless of what they're doing."
            Carr, who came in fourth in the Big 12 with 17.3 points per game, finished with just five points and one assist.
Bridges had 13 points and a team-high seven boards, scoring in double figures for the career-high eighth-consecutive game, while Flagler chipped in with 11 points and four of the Bears' nine total assists. Senior guard Dale Bonner, playing his most minutes in a while with redshirt freshman guard Langston Love out with an injury, had three points, three assists and two steals in 18 minutes.
            Baylor returns home to host Texas Tech (12-10, 1-8) at 12 p.m. Saturday at the Ferrell Center, going for the season sweep. The Red Raiders snapped an eight-game losing streak with a road win over LSU in the Big 12/SEC Challenge and then rallied from a 23-point second-half deficit at home to stun 13^th-ranked Iowa State in overtime, 80-77, Monday night for their first conference win.