Horns end 6-game skid in series vs. Bears
AUSTIN — For years now, Baylor has been the envy of Texas, loathe as the Longhorns would be to admit it.
Since the start of the 2015-16 season, coach Scott Drew's program has unveiled a national championship banner, claimed a couple Big 12 regular season titles and beat up on its rival to the south with a 12-1 edge in a series that dates to 1906. The Bears have been where Texas wants to go, and they've so often stood as a greenand-gold barricade against the Longhorns' long-awaited rise.
On Monday night at the soldout Moody Center, Texas took a step toward becoming more than just a yearly stepping stone for Baylor. The 10th-ranked Longhorns beat the 11th-ranked Bears 76-71, snapping a six-game series losing streak that began on Feb. 27, 2019.
It wasn't exactly cathartic. Texas (18-4, 7-2 Big 12) still has so much basketball left to play, including a Feb. 25 trip up to Waco for a rematch with Baylor (16-6, 5-4). But this win, two days after Texas was “out-toughed” in a bruising 11-point loss to No. 4 Tennessee, was at least worthy of some late-night reveling as the Longhorns rose into first place in the Big 12, half a game up on No. 7 Kansas State and one game ahead of No. 13 Iowa State.
“I was really proud of the way our guys responded from getting beat,” interim coach Rodney Terry said. “Baylor's been really good. Scott's done an incredible job with that program. And they've had our number, just to be honest. You look at the (past few) years and we hadn't won very much. We needed to try to find a way to see if we can get this thing done.”
After getting outmuscled on the glass and inside in Saturday's loss to Tennessee, Terry challenged his team to just “be better,” super senior forward Timmy Allen said. “We're not a team that's used to getting out-toughed.”
Allen rose to the occasion with 18 points on 70 percent shooting, six rebounds and four assists in 35 minutes.
He got going early, scoring or assisting on five of Texas' first six field goals by using his back-tothe-basket game. Allen dished out three assists to three different teammates and hit a couple of mid-range jumpers in those early minutes.
On the other end, Allen spent most of the night sticking to freshman guard Keyonte George, who entered the game leading Baylor in scoring average (17.2) and made 3-pointers (54). George missed his first seven shots and wound up heaving his way to 17 points on 5of-18 shooting.
“He's a great player, man,” Allen said of George. “His ceiling is through the roof. But I just tried to make him earn shots, you know. Take tough ones, and if he makes it, cool, head onto the next play. Credit to him, he still got going (in the second half). Great player, great matchup. It was a fun battle.”
Where Allen and Texas really showed strides was in the departments of rebounding and interior defense.
Baylor led the Big 12 in rebounding margin (plus-five) and offensive rebounding entering this game, but Texas was plusseven on the glass in the first half and only minus-one for the game. The Bears also hit just 40 percent of their 2s and 30.8 percent of their 3s.
But like Drew said during his postgame remarks, “Nobody's packing up and going home when they get down (in the Big 12).”
Texas' 2-point halftime lead swelled to nine twice in the second half. Baylor's stars responded with spunky runs each time. Guards LJ Cryer (19 points) and Adam Flagler (11) made big buckets down the stretch, and the Bears eventually knocked their deficit down to one with 50 seconds to go after George's 3-point play.
The Longhorns' starting backcourt had a harder time getting the ball through the net. Marcus Carr (5 points) and Tyrese Hunter (13) combined to miss 18 of their 25 shots. Sixth man Sir'jabari Rice picked them up, drilling four 3s and scoring 15 of his game-high 21 points in the second half.
And to his credit, Carr chose the perfect time to sink his second shot of the game, yo-yoing the ball at top of the key and selling the drive before hitting a stepback jumper over Cryer's contest with 27 seconds left.
George's ensuing game-tying 3 ricocheted off the rim and into Rice's hands. He hit two final free throws to ice the game and send Baylor back out into the frosty night with a rare loss to a program that it'd grown so accustomed to dominating over the years.
“That's a top-10 team. That's a Big 12 game,” Drew said. “It's great coaches, great players. To win a road game, you gotta earn it. We didn't earn it tonight.”