Newly top-ranked Bears survive Sooners’ bid

MaCio Teague had 16 points, fellow transfer Davion Mitchell had 13 and Baylor held on to win its first-ever home game as the No. 1 team, beating Oklahoma 61-57 on Monday night.

After leapfrogging Gonzaga for the top spot in the new AP Top 25 poll released earlier in the day, the Bears (16-1, 6-0 Big 12) stretched their winning streak to 15. They are 6-0 in conference play for the first time since winning their first 10 Southwest Conference games in 1948.

Brady Manek had 21 points to lead Oklahoma (12-6, 3-3), following up his career-high 31 points only two days earlier against TCU.

The Sooners pulled to 59-57 on 3-pointers by Manek and Austin Reaves, and had the ball when Kristian Doolittle forced a steal against Baylor guard Jared Butler. But Reaves missed a potential go-ahead 3-pointer from the left corner in front of the Oklahoma bench with six seconds left.

The only other time the Bears reached No. 1 was in the poll released Jan. 9, 2017, and they lost by 21 the next night at No. 10

West Virginia. They rebounded with a win at No. 25 Kansas State, but had slipped to No. 6 by time they returned home the following week.

Teague, the junior guard who transferred from UNC Asheville, had a steal and a breakaway layup with just under seven minutes left to stretch the Baylor lead to 53-46. When he missed a 3 on his next shot, Freddie Gillespie had a putback slam.

Gillespie finished with 12 points and 15 rebounds, his seventh double-double this season

Mitchell scored 10 points with two 3s when Baylor broke a tie and went ahead to stay with a 17-6 run to end the first half. A shot clock-beating jumper was the first of seven points in a row for the former Auburn transfer.

It was the sixth time in eight games that Mitchell scored in double figures. He had scored at least 10 points only four times in his first 43 career games, including 34 at Auburn as a freshman in 2017-18.

The Bears had never before won six consecutive Big 12 games in the same season.

Baylor plays its next two games on the road, Saturday night at Florida and then Jan. 29 at Iowa State.