No. 12 MBB Dominates SHSU in Home-Opening Win

Tuesday, November 12

Waco, Texas

7 PM

Baylor

2-1,0-0Big 12

104

Sam Houston

1-2,0-0CUSA

Sam Houston

Baylor

104

No. 12 MBB Dominates SHSU in Home-Opening Win

11/12/2024 9:20:00 PM | Men's Basketball

Box Score Box Score (PDF)

Seven Bears end the night in double-digit points, first time since 2013

By Jerry Hill
Baylor Bear Insider

WACO, Texas – Baylor's high-flying act that included seven dunks looked like something out of Cirque du Soleil, more fitting for Las Vegas than the Foster Pavilion.

Josh Ojianwuna and freshman VJ Edgecombe brought the crowd of 7,500 to its feet with rim rattling dunks off alley-oop passes, lifting the 12^th-ranked Bears (2-1) to a 104-67 rout of the Sam Houston Bearkats Tuesday night.

"When you've got great guards like (Jayden Nunn), Jeremy (Roach), Rob (Wright), even bigs that can throw lobs, they trust me to go get it," said the 6-5 Edgecombe, who had 13 points, 10 rebounds, seven assists and three steals. "I tell them, wherever they throw it, I'm going to go get it. Just hearing the crowd, this is my first time in the Foster, and this is just a glimpse of how it's going to be throughout the year."

Showing off a balanced inside-out attack, Baylor got half of its points in the paint – outscoring Sam Houston, 52-24 – and also knocked down 14-of-32 (44.4%) from outside the 3-point arc. Leading the Bears for the second-straight game with 19 points, Nunn hit his first three from distance and finished 5-for-8.

"We're a much better shooting team than our first two games' statistics showed," said Baylor coach Scott Drew. "I don't know if we'll shoot 44% (from 3) all year, but we're a 40% shooting team, and we have a lot of good shooters."

This came against a Sam Houston team (1-2) that won the Conference USA regular-season championship last year and blew out Tarleton, the Bears' opponent on Sunday, by 29 points at home.

"We knew they had that championship mentality," Drew said. "You can't let them back in the game. Really proud that when they made a run and got it down to 12, 11, we were able to extend it again. And I thought finishing the half the way that we did was important as well."

When the Bearkats' Lamar Wilkerson hit three of his five first-half 3-pointers in a 66-second stretch to make it an 11-point game, Baylor closed the half on an 8-2 run that included an Edgecombe dunk off a Nunn alley-oop and a driving scoop layup by freshman Rob Wright as he avoided 6-7 Kian Scroggins.

Norchad Omier, who had his second-consecutive double-double with 18 points and 10 rebounds, scored on a three-point play and then knocked down a 3-pointer that quickly pushed the lead to 60-37 less than a minute and a half into the second half.

While most of the highlight-reel dunks came off passes from one of the guards, maybe the most impressive one was when Edgecombe crashed the boards off a missed 3-pointer by Jalen Celestine and threw it down with one hand, extending Baylor's lead to 78-45 with 10:32 left in the game.

Comparing Edgecombe to Phoenix Trail Blazers guard Shaeden Sharpe, the seventh pick overall in the 2022 NBA Draft, Nunn said "they just jump crazy. It's a once-in-a-lifetime thing playing with guys like that."

Asked whether 6-11 New Orleans Pelicans rookie center Yves Missi or Edgecombe can get higher, Nunn said, "I want to say VJ, just because Yves is way taller." Missi became an ESPN SportsCenter regular with some of his dunks last year in his only season with the Bears.

"VJ jumps with everybody, just like Yves does," Nunn said. "He doesn't care if he gets dunked on, and he's going to go get a lob. He always tells me, 'Throw that lob anywhere.' I trust him."

With the game in hand, Drew was able to clear his bench for the last few minutes and bring in freshmen Jason Asemota, Marino Dubravcic and Omar Adegbola and Division III transfer Davidson Hubbard.

Adegbola, who redshirted last season, got the Bears over the 100-point mark with a 3-pointer and three-point play and then Hubbard capped the scoring with a rebound and putback in the final seconds of the game.

"They practice really hard. And when they get a chance to play, you want to see them have success," Drew said. "It was great seeing a couple guys getting their first baskets in a Baylor uniform. We've got one more, Marino, who was close on a couple. But we've got to get him at some point."

Roach had 12 points and eight assists, Ojianwuna added 11 points and Wright and Celestine scored 10 points apiece in Baylor's balanced attack.

Wilkerson was the leading scorer for the Bearkats, hitting five 3-pointers and scoring 17 of his team-high 19 points in the first half.

Finishing off a two-game homestand, Baylor will face Tarleton (0-3) at 7 p.m. Sunday in the back end of a split doubleheader with the women. Nicki Collen's 17^th-ranked Bears (1-1) will host East Texas A&M on Thursday and Texas A&M-Corpus Christi at 1 p.m. Sunday at Foster Pavilion.