AGGIES FALL TO BAYLOR
But Baylor’s big man has big second half to help the Bears knock out NMSU in first round of NCAAs
TULSA, Okla . — The Aggies didn’t count on Motley’s crew in the first half.
And they could do nothing to stop the Baylor All-America candidate in the second.
Despite keeping power forward Johnathan Motley in check for the opening 20 minutes, New Mexico State couldn’t overcome the 40 points scored off the bench by backups Al Freeman and Terry Maston, who led the No. 3 Baylor Bears to a 91-73 win over the 14th-seeded Aggies on Friday in a first-round NCAA Tournament game in the BOK Center.
Freeman and Maston, who often backs up Motley, combined for 25 of Baylor’s 38 first-half points. Motley, a 6-foot-10 junior, had just four points and one rebound in the half while being limited to nine minutes because of foul trouble.
“It was kind of the game plan,” said NMSU junior guard Braxton Huggins. “We wanted to take the ball out the best player’s hands and kind of make the role players try to beat us. And in the second half, Johnathan Motley just came in and scored a couple buckets on us and opened up the lead.”
In the meantime, NMSU (28-6) looked to be feeding off the big stage, hitting six first-half
3-pointers, the last coming from Huggins with 1 second left on the clock, giving the Aggies a 40-38 lead at the break.
But Motley wouldn’t be held down long. He set the tone as his 3-pointer with 16:27 left in the game broke a 44-44 tie and sent the Bears on a 24-4 run that ended the Aggies’ hopes for their first NCAA Tournament win since 1993.
Motley, one of 15 finalists for the John R. Wooden Award as national player of the year, finished with 15 points, 10 rebounds and two blocks.
“Motley was kind of fresh in the second half and came out with some pops,” said first year NMSU coach Paul Weir. “... I thought his 3-pointer was a really big shot for them. That’s not ordinarily a shot that he’s making. I thought the guys did a really good job of keeping him off the glass and doing good things. He kind of got some stuff towards the back of the press and in transition, which is where we were in that lull offensively and we couldn’t get anything to go down.”
In the fateful 7 minute, 44 second span that the Bears turned the 44-44 tie into a 68-48 lead, Motley had nine points, five rebounds, two assists, a 3-pointer and a pair of dunks.
“I thought we played well, ran out of gas there towards the second half, but that has nothing to do with how hard these guys work or how much they care,” said Weir. “It was just a little bit of maybe just running on a little bit of fumes from three games in three days last week (winning the WAC tournament in Las Vegas, Nev.). But an amazing opportunity for us. Unfortunately, the margin of error in games like this is really, really small.”
NMSU senior guard Ian Baker stopped the bleeding with 8:16 remaining with a jumper and scored 11 of his 19 points from that point on.
In his final game as an Aggie, Baker finished with 10 points and five assists and was one of three Aggies to score in double figures (Huggins 19, Eli Chuha 11). Jemerrio Jones came off the bench and ignited the Aggies’ strong first half. He finished the game with four points, six rebounds, seven assists and a pair of steals in 24 minutes.
“I told one of these people here the other day that in a million years I would have never thought I would have ended up at New Mexico State,” said Baker, a Washington, D.C., native and the WAC player of the year. “But it was the place for me and I’m glad I ended up there.”
Baker ends his NMSU career having scored 1,411 points and dishing out 378 assists.
NMSU was outrebounded 39-27 in the game and outscored 50-28 in the paint. Led by Freeman (21) and Maston (19), Baylor’s bench outscored NMSU’s 42-16.
While Baylor moves on to play Southern Cal, the Aggies were scheduled to be on a charter flight back to Las Cruces by early evening out of Tulsa.