Box Score

By Jerry Hill
Baylor Bear Insider
 
FORT WORTH, Texas – Be careful, don't poke the Bear.
 
When Baylor freshman Ja'Kobe Walter missed everything on a 3-point attempt about five minutes into the second half of Monday night's prime time game at Schollmaier Arena, the TCU student section started chanting, "Air ball! Air ball!"
 
And then he silenced them just a minute later, knocking down a 3-pointer from the corner that gave the 15^th-ranked Bears their first double-digit lead before blowing the TCU students a kiss. The fab freshman scored 13 of his 16 points in the second half to lift Baylor to a 62-54 win over the Horned Frogs, avenging last month's triple-overtime loss in Waco.
 
TCU (19-9, 8-7) seemed bothered all night by the aggressive zone defense deployed by the Bears (20-8, 9-6), who forced 14 turnovers and held the Frogs to just 33.33% shooting overall and a dismal 5-of-19 from outside the arc.
 
"Five for 19 is not a typical outing for them," said Baylor coach Scott Drew, whose team was coming off back-to-back losses, including Saturday's overtime loss to new No. 1 Houston. "(The zone) works better when people miss shots, "but I'd like to credit our defense a little bit, too. I thought we did a good job of making things difficult for some of the time."
 
 Although TCU coach Jamie Dixon said the Horned Frogs were ready for the zone – "it's the same zone we run" – they never found any kind of offensive rhythm. They missed their last 10 shot attempts of the first half and went through a disastrous 0-for-9 stretch in the second half.
 
"I think it's the mindset we had coming into the game, being that we lost to them in triple overtime last time," said Walter, who was 3-of-8 from distance and 5-of-6 from the line. "We had a lot of motivation, and we just wanted to focus on the defensive end, and then just get out and score on the offensive end."
 
Neither team exactly lit up the scoreboard in the first half. While the Bears shot just under 31% overall and 5-of-14 from 3 in the first 20 minutes, the Frogs made only 29.6% from the field and 0-for-8 from outside the arc.
 
Senior forward Jalen Bridges was Baylor's only real threat in the first half, when he scored the Bears' first nine points and hit his first four 3-point attempts of the game to give BU a slim 25-23 halftime edge.
 
"You can always count on JB to come out hot, and definitely sparked it for us," Walter said. "As they were hitting their shots, he was the only hitting shots, too, so he was keeping us in the game."
 
Walter said Bridges and Toledo transfer RayJ Dennis – who had nine points, nine assists and nine rebounds – both provided a senior leadership presence for this young Baylor basketball team.
 
"And then, just them being veterans and being in the moment, they always step up," Walter said.
 
After Bridges' early flurry staked the Bears to a five-point lead, TCU responded with a 7-0 run that included a three-point play by Emanuel Miller and four-straight free throws by Miller and Jameer Nelson to go up 23-21.
 
Baylor did close out the half with four unanswered points on a Dennis layup and a pair of free throws by Jayden Nunn to give the Bears a 25-23 halftime lead.
 
Held to just three points on 1-of-5 shooting in the first half, Walter came up huge in an extended 19-2 second-half run that pushed Baylor's lead to 51-33. He found an open lane to drive in for a slam dunk, then capped a 10-0 run with that corner 3 that silenced the crowd.

Offsetting a poor shooting night, Baylor dominated on the glass, 41-29, and limited the Frogs to just 17-of-51 shooting overall.Asked if he liked running the zone defense, Drew said "what I like is winning."
  
"We'll play a box-and-one, triangle-and-two. We'll play no defense, whatever it takes to win," he said. "The last five years, we've been really good in man, so credit the guys for listening and buying in and trusting us. Some games, we play zone; and some games, we play man."
 
On the back end of the 19-2 run, Nunn and Walter both knocked down 3-pointers to extend the lead to 51-33.
 
"The big thing is, when you play TCU, you've got to do a good job on the glass. And we did that," Drew said of the 41-29 rebounding edge and an 11-8 difference in second-chance points. But the Bears also did it on the defensive side, never letting the Frogs have anything easy.
 
Freshman 7-footer Yves Missi  had a nice bounce-back game after a rough outing against Houston in Saturday's overtime loss, matching Walter for game-high scoring honors with 16 points. Bridges tallied 15 points, including 12 in the second half, with Dennis coming up just short of a triple-double with nine points, nine rebounds and nine assists. 
 
"I think that's the most elite stat line of the night, for sure," Walter said.
 
TCU, led by Nelson and Miller with 11 and 10 points, respectively, closed the game on an 8-0 run to get back within single digits on a Micah Peavy 3-pointer with 8.5 seconds left. While the Frogs never fouled to try to keep chipping away at the deficit, the Bears didn't score in the last three-plus minutes and turned it over three times in that stretch. 
 
Baylor returns home for a top-15 matchup against No. 7 Kansas (21-6, 9-5) at 12 noon Saturday at Foster Pavilion in an ABC nationally televised game. The Jayhawks won the first meeting in Lawrence, 64-61, and will play BYU Tuesday night at h