Jerry Hill
Baylor Bear Insider
 
WACO, Texas – Much like the prevent defense in football sometimes prevents you from winning, when you play not to lose in basketball, sometimes you don't win.
 
That's exactly what happened to 25^th-ranked Baylor, which went up by as many as 12 in the first half and held the lead for almost 32 minutes over the rival TCU Horned Frogs. Even after tying it with 25 seconds left on a Jayden Nunn 3-pointer, the Bears gave up a corner 3-pointer by Brendan Wenzel in falling to the Frogs, 74-71, Sunday afternoon at Foster Pavilion.
 
"I thought down the stretch, they were playing free, and we were playing not to lose," said Baylor coach Scott Drew, whose team fell to 11-6 overall and 3-3 in the Big 12 with its second-straight loss overall and first at home this season. "These are games where when you can separate, you've got to separate. And if you don't, this is what happens."
 
"This" was a gut-punch loss against a TCU team (11-7, 3-3) that pulled out a triple-overtime win in the newly opened Foster Pavilion almost a year ago. The Horned Frogs have handed Baylor two of its three losses at Foster (18-3).
 
"At the end of the day, you've got to win your home games," Drew said. "So, we've got to make this up somewhere."
 
What made it even worse was that this was TCU's first road victory of the season. Jamie Dixon's squad snapped a five-game road losing skid and came in a combined 0-6 in road or neutral-site games.
 
"I'm going to be honest, they played harder than us," said freshman VJ Edgecombe, who scored 18 points and hit three free throws with 28 seconds left to make it a one-possession game. "In the last 10 minutes, they just played harder than us. It's not X's and O's, no execution or anything like that. They just played harder than us, on the glass, in the paint, everywhere."
 
Up by as many as 12 in the first half and leading 39-32 at the break, the Bears still had a seemingly comfortable 56-47 lead a little over eight minutes into the second half.
 
But things got as icy as the freezing weather outside, with Baylor missing 14 of its last 18 shots and giving up a late 9-0 run as TCU took its first lead since the 15:13 mark of the first half when it was 6-5.
 
"I think they had that fire in them," said Miami transfer Norchad Omier, who scored a game-high 20 points. "You've got to give them credit. They played hard, they hit tough shots. They had two mid-range, turn-around pull-ups. They just hit tough shots."
 
TCU first had a 7-0 run, capped by a dunk by Ernest Udeh Jr. off a Baylor turnover, that made it a two-point game, 56-54, with just under nine minutes to go. Micah Robinson's second-chance bucket gave the Frogs the lead, with Wenzel knocking down a corner trey to finish off a 9-0 run that made it 67-61 with 3:21 left in the game.
 
"First half, I thought missed layups and missed free throws really hurt us from getting more separation," Drew said. "Second half, when they got rolling, we didn't have answers."
 
Jace Posey and Trazarien White had offensive rebounds and putbacks down the stretch to give TCU a 71-65 lead with 35 seconds left, but Edgecombe calmly knocked down all three free throws when he was fouled by White from outside the arc.
 
And then, on the inbounds pass by Allette, it went off Wenzel when he collided with Baylor guard Jeremy Roach, who had to be helped off the floor and didn't return. When the play was reviewed and the call confirmed, Nunn took the inbounds pass and drained an open 3-pointer that tied it up with 25 seconds left.
 
"I was feeling a lot better than when we were down six with 20-some seconds to go," Drew said. "But I knew we still had to get that last stop. Our defense has got to win us games, too."
 
When Baylor switched to a zone defense following a TCU timeout, Noah Reynolds found Wenzel in the corner wide open for a gut-punch 3-pointer over a leaping Josh Ojianwuna.
 
"We thought the zone gave us the best chance to get a stop here," Drew said. "Obviously, hindsight, it wasn't. We ended up over-rotating instead of staying solid. And because of that, we left the best shooter, in my opinion, with a wide-open shot. So, it didn't happen how we figured it would happen."
 
Even after that, freshman Robert O. Wright III sprinted the ball down the floor and found Nunn in the corner again. But this time, Udeh swatted it away for his fourth block of the game.
 
"We just go on to the next game," Edgecombe said. "We can't sit on a loss this whole time. We have to take what we take from this game and move on."
 
Udeh had a monster double-double for the Horned Frogs with a career-high 16 points and 15 rebounds. Wenzel had 17 points off the bench, while Allette and Reynolds scored 13 apiece.
 
Roach hit three from distance and scored 11 points, Wright added six points and eight assists and Nunn had eight points in his first game off the bench in two seasons at Baylor. He had started 51 straight at Baylor and 106 consecutive games, a streak that dated back to his freshman year at VCU.
 
"We just wanted to see if we could get out to a different start," Drew said of replacing Nunn with Wright in the starting lineup. "We look at it like there's six starters, and Nunn is a big contributor for us. We've got 100% confidence and trust in him. I know Curtis Jones has done a great job at Iowa State in that same kind of role, so we were just trying to see if we could get a better start."
 
TCU dominated the boards, 41-25, including 11 on the offensive end, while Baylor scored 21 points off the Frogs' 17 turnovers.
 
The Bears finish off a two-game home stand with a matchup against Kansas State (7-10, 1-5) and longtime BU assistant coach Jerome Tang at 8 p.m. Wednesday in a game that will be broadcast by ESPNU. The Wildcats have lost five in a row after opening league play with a 70-67 upset of then-No. 16 Cincinnati.