Box Score

By Jerry Hill
Baylor Bear Insider
 
WACO, Texas – For one brief moment, Baylor looked poised for another miraculous comeback Saturday night when Monaray Baldwin hauled in a 71-yard touchdown pass from Blake Shapen to make it a two-score game early in the fourth quarter.
 
Texas Tech and second-year head coach Joey McGuire had other ideas in his first game back in Waco after five years as an assistant at Baylor.
 
The Red Raiders (3-3, 2-1) pulled away late with two fourth-quarter touchdowns and rode Tahj Brooks and Behren Morton to a 39-14 win over the Bears (2-4, 1-2) Saturday night before a "Gold Out" crowd of 44,620 at McLane Stadium.
 
"Way disappointed with tonight," said Baylor coach Dave Aranda, whose team has dropped six of its last seven at home. "I am still hopeful and still believing in the team. And that was the message that we just had in our break, in our prayer, was to continue to believe in the team and stay together.
 
"With the bye week coming after this, there will be a lot of opportunities to kind of reflect and see and heal and improve. We're certainly aiming to do that. There is a lot of improving to do."
 
Hoping to build off the momentum of last week's unbelievable 36-35 comeback victory over UCF, when the Bears scored 29 unanswered points, Baylor's defense hung in for as long as it could while the offense didn't really get it going until it was too late.
 
"We've got to be able to start faster and execute at the start of the game and when it matters most," Aranda said. "That's a thing we've got to be able to get fixed. I'm proud of the defense, of how they played and competed. I thought for three quarters, we played well. When you look at the yards rushing, you look at the sacks and you look at the 1-for-6 on fourth downs. I think those tell the story."
 
Shapen passed for 324 yards and a touchdown, but was sacked six times and lost a fumble as the Bears dropped their fourth home game of the season.
 
"When I see Blake playing hard like that, it makes me want to go hard," said Baldwin, who recorded his fourth-career 100-yard game, hauling in five passes for 126 yards. "We just have to stay together."
 
The biggest disparity in the game was rushing yards. Tech's Tahj Brooks rushed for 170 yards on 31 carries (5.5-yard average), while the Bears netted just 17 yards and lost 45 yards on six sacks. Dominic Richardson led Baylor with 21 yards on nine totes.
 
"When you have the limited number of rushing yards that we had," Aranda said, "it's hard to have success."
 
Tech's balanced attack had redshirt sophomore quarterback Behren Morton completing 19-of-26 passes for 180 yards and three touchdowns adding another TD on the ground.
 
Baldwin's big 71-yard TD catch and run in the fourth quarter was the only time Baylor converted on a fourth down. Going for it on fourth-and-five from its own 29, Shapen connected with Baldwin on a deep pass as he got behind safety Dadrion Taylor-Demerson.
 
After offsetting penalties nullified the first two-point attempt, Shapen found Ketron Jackson Jr. on the second try, cutting the deficit to 24-11 with 13:34 left in the game.
 
"It definitely gave us a spark," Baldwin said. "I felt there was no point in the game where we weren't in the game and had a chance to win. We just need to learn how to finish every game. We need to be consistent."
 
Unlike last week, when Baylor held UCF scoreless over the last quarter and a half, the Red Raiders answered immediately. They drove 65 yards in eight plays and scored on an 18-yard run by Brooks, who added the two-point conversion to stretch the lead to 32-11.
 
Baldwin added a 39-yard grab on Baylor's next series, but the Bears had to settle for Isaiah Hankins' second field goal of the night, this one from 33 yards. When Baylor tried and failed on a fourth-down play deep in its own territory, Tech closed out the scoring with Morton's 10-yard TD run to make it 39-14.
 
The Red Raiders led 17-3 at the break on Morton TD passes of 13 yards to Coy Eakin and a 16-yarder to tight end Baylor Cupp. The Bears' lone first-half score was a 33-yard field goal by Hankins in the second quarter, coming after a fumble recovery by Garmon Randolph that safety Devyn Bobby forced.
 
Cupp scored again on the Red Raiders' second possession of the second half, catching an 18-yard pass from Morton to cap a 13-play, 85-yard drive after another failed fourth-down play by the Bears.
 
"Offensively, particularly, we have to be able to start faster," Aranda said. "And throughout the week, we talked about winning the first quarter and taking it a play at a time and a drive at a time. I think we have to be able to revisit all of that and really kind of look at what we're asking everybody to do. And then really focus in on the things that we can do well."
 
Off next week, Baylor will go back on the road for just the second time this season to face Big 12 newcomer Cincinnati (2-3, 0-2) on Saturday, Oct. 21. Idle this weekend, the Bearcats will host Iowa State next Saturday, Oct. 14, before welcoming Baylor to Nippert Memorial Stadium for the first time.