By Jerry Hill
Baylor Bear Insider
            Scott Drew has seen this movie before, a team that "lays an egg" on Senior Day. He had just hoped that it wouldn't happen to his team in Saturday's regular-season finale.
            Scoring their fewest points in a half and game, the seventh-ranked Bears (22-9, 11-7) suffered their worst home loss of the season, falling to the unranked Iowa State Cyclones, 73-58, in what could be their final Big 12 Conference game at the Ferrell Center.
            "I've seen it with other Senior Nights," said Drew, whose team will be seeded either third or fourth for next week's Big 12 Tournament in Kansas City. "I don't know if it's because there are so many seniors. Because of COVID, you don't know if someone's a senior, not a senor. But I've seen a lot of teams lay eggs. Senior Night, you're always really emotional. Sometimes that's good, sometimes that's bad. Today, it wasn't good."
            Scheduled to be in the new Foster Pavilion next January for the start of conference play, Baylor struggled on both ends against an Iowa State team that swept the season series with two 15-point victories.
            Thrown off by a multitude of defenses that Iowa State threw at them, the Bears shot just 36% overall, 10-of-28 from outside the arc and even missed eight of 18 free throw attempts. They were also dominated on the boards, 36-24, and were outscored 36-14 in the paint.
            "With all the defenses and everything that they do, I felt like at the end of the day they had more energy and effort than us," said Adam Flagler, one of six players honored before and after the game in Senior Day ceremonies.
            "We didn't go out there and play hard enough and execute enough to win the game. Credit to Iowa State. Obviously, they're the top defensive team (in the Big 12) already. If you don't play with energy and effort, it's going to be hard to beat them."
            Flagler, who hit a late 3-pointer to finish with a game-high 20 points, was recognized along with Flo Thamba, Jonathan Tchamwa Tchatchoua, Dale Bonner, Zach Loveday and Jordan Turner. Thamba, though, is the only one who has exhausted his eligibility.
            "It is frustrating," said junior guard LJ Cryer, Baylor's only other double-figure scorer with 13 points, "because next year is not going to be the same team. You want to go off on a good note, because you don't know who's coming back. It's disappointing, but we've got to move forward and hopefully we can make some noise in the tournament and end it off the right way there."
            Despite getting a lift from Bonner, who scored all eight of his points in the first half, the Bears shot a dismal 28% in the first half and trailed 33-22 at the break. The previous low for a half was 24 points in the first half against Northwestern State in a game Baylor won, 58-48, to match Saturday's final point total.
            "When we see stuff like that," Cryer said of the Cyclones' zone and trapping defense, "we've got to trust the bigs and the bigs have got to trust themselves when we pass it to them to go drive the ball because sometimes nobody's guarding them. We've seen that look plenty of times, just today it caused a lot of problems."
            The best stretch and seemingly the only real window for the Bears was a 10-0 run early in the second half. After Iowa State opened the second half with a 3-pointer by Tre King to go up 14, Baylor got it going with a tough shot in the paint by freshman Keyonte George and capped the run with back-to-back treys by Cryer and Flagler.
            Like turning off a faucet, Iowa State shut it down and answered with 11 unanswered points and extended the lead back out to 47-32 on a 3-pointer by Gabe Kalscheuer.
            "We knew they were going to go through a little momentum swing. They're a good team, a really good team," said Kalscheuer, one of three Cyclones in double figures, scoring 10 of his 12 points in the second half. "We just stuck to who we were. We just had to get rebounds, free-throw blocks. We kind of struggled with that in the first half, but we didn't let them get them in the second half."
            Baylor cut the deficit to single-digits just once the rest of the way, when George hit a 3-pointer to make it 49-40 with 8:10 left. But the Cyclones just answered with another 9-0 run that included 3-pointers by Kalscheuer and Osun Osunniyi.          
            "We didn't do a good enough job running our offense and fighting to get our offense lower and executing," Drew said. "We didn't hit the roller, our bigs, enough when they put two on the ball. When we did get good looks, and we didn't have enough of them, we didn't make them. . . . The things that have made us a good team, we didn't do. It's one of those games that the only blessing was nobody got injured today. So, I guess there's always a silver lining."
            While no one else got hurt, redshirt freshman guard Langston Love missed the game with an eye abrasion.
            Jaren Holmes led Iowa State with 16 points, seven rebounds and five assists, while Tre King chipped in with 13 points and seven boards.
            Seeded fourth for next week's Big 12 Tournament in Kansas City, the Bears will play fifth-seeded Iowa State in a rematch in Thursday's 11:30 a.m. quarterfinal.