By Jerry Hill
Baylor Bear Insider
 
WACO, Texas – Every time 18^th-ranked BYU looked like it was going to pull away and put this one in the books, the No. 14 Baylor Bears answered.
 
"You've got to be tough in this league," said Baylor coach Scott Drew, whose team rallied from a nine-point second-half deficit to knock off the visiting Cougars, 81-72, Tuesday night before a sellout crowd of 7,500 at the new Foster Pavilion. "When you're down, you've got to have that resiliency and toughness to come back. If you don't, you're not going to win many games."
 
Jalen Bridges scored 17 of his season-high 25 points in the second half and hit a pair of free throws with 54.0 seconds left that gave the Bears (13-2, 2-0) a little breathing room . . . finally.
 
"Jalen was huge," Drew said. "Tonight, (Bridges) was going and guys found him. And he was aggressive, did a great job getting to the free throw line."
 
That actually proved to be the difference in the game as Baylor got there twice as many times as BYU (12-3, 0-2), hitting 21-of-28 overall and a perfect 4-for-4 on the Cougars' two technical fouls.
 
"They had a bigger guy on me, so I just tried to exploit that a little bit," said Bridges, who was 8-for-9 from the line and 3-for-6 from 3-point range. "When you've got guards like (Jayden Nunn), like RayJ (Dennis) that can just find me when I'm open, makes life easy for me."
 
In a back-and-forth game that featured 16 lead changes and eight ties, BYU took advantage of some poor shooting by the Bears to go up 20-13 on a Trevin Knell 3-pointer at the 9:37 mark in the first half. Baylor hit just one of its first seven shots and was 4-for-18 from the floor at one time.
 
A three-point play by Bridges and back-to-back treys by freshman Ja'Kobe Walter and sophomore Langston Love put the Bears back on top, 24-22. But the Cougars closed the half on a 13-3 run and went into halftime with a 39-33 lead when Jaxson Robinson converted a three-point play with a layup and free throw with 1.1 seconds left.
 
That lead quickly went from six to nine in the first 2 ½ minutes of the second half, when Knell hit a pair of 3-pointers and gave the Bears their biggest deficit of the game, 45-36.
 
Again, though, Baylor answered. Reeling off 10 unanswered points, the Bears went back on top, 46-45, when Love buried one of his three 3-pointers. Love scored 15 points off the bench, hitting 3-for-4 from distance and 4-for-4 from the line.
 
"We talked in our chapel today about perseverance," Bridges said, "and I feel like there's nobody who embodies that more than Langston Love. Everything that he's gone through. Even this offseason, he had an injury to his pec. It was like he couldn't catch a break. Just to see him out there doing his thing, making shots, making big plays for us. It's amazing."
 
After seven lead exchanges, Baylor took the lead for good on a Nunn layup that put the Bears up, 58-57, with just under nine minutes to play.
 
"We knew we were just beating ourselves with silly mistakes," said Nunn, who finished with 11 points, three assists and three steals. "Once we covered them, that's when we started taking the lead. It really just started with defense. The defense created our offense for us, for sure."
 
Down the stretch, the Bears went 6-for-6 from the line to keep the visiting Cougars at bay. In a critical point, Love and Bridges canned a pair of free throws each when the BYU coach was hit with a technical and guard Dallin Hall fouled out.
 
"The first year at this level of competition, there's going to be a little bit of regression," Pope said. "For the next 18 games, we're playing top-25 teams. One of the beautiful things about being in this league, in our first year, is we get to kind of figure this out and grow into this. And we will."
 
Bridges was one of five double-figure scorers for Baylor, getting 16 points from freshman Ja'Kobe Walter, 15 off the bench from Love and 11 and 10 points, respectively, by Nunn and Dennis.
 
Knell and Spencer Johnson led the Cougars (12-3, 0-2) with 15 points apiece, while Hall scored 13 before fouling out.
 
Baylor will play its second-straight at home, hosting Cincinnati (12-3, 1-1) at 7 p.m. Saturday in an ESPN broadcast. One of four newcomers in the Big 12, the Bearcats opened their debut season in the league with a 71-60 win over BYU before losing by one point at home to No. 25 Texas, 74-73.
 
Drew and his coaching tree sit atop the conference standings alone at 2-0, with Grant McCasland-led Texas Tech routing Oklahoma State, 90-73; and Jerome Tang's K-State squad knocking off West Virginia, 81-67, in Morgantown