No. 9 Bears Dropped by Buzzer Beater in Final Big 12 Trip to Austin

AUSTIN, Texas — The No. 9 Baylor Men’s Basketball team (14-4, 3-2) lost 75-73 to the Texas Longhorns (13-5, 2-3) on a buzzer-beating layup from Tyrese Hunter.

Jalen Bridges tied the game up with a clutch triple immediately prior to Hunter’s game-winner, but his 17 points were not enough to save the Bears.

Baylor has now dropped two straight extremely close games on the row to fall to 3-2 in Big 12 play. 

Ja’Kobe Walter led the green and gold in scoring on the day with 22 points on top of his seven rebounds. Eight of those were second-half points, and Scott Drew continues to look for a true go-to guy on the offensive end in close situations.

Walter was huge in the first half though. With the Longhorns shooting a blistering 9-for-11 from deep, Walter knocked down three of his own to answer.

The entire first frame was a back-and-forth affair with great shooting on both sides. 

The halftime score was 42-41 in favor of the hosts, and both teams were shooting over 55% from the field.

The shooting cooled off and the defenses locked down in the second half, but critically, Baylor went ice cold at the worst time. 

The Bears did not hit a field goal between 9:10 to go and Bridges game-tying three with just five seconds on the clock.

That three would not have been necessary had Baylor collected the rebound off of Dylan Disu’s missed jump shot with 25 seconds left and the Bears down just one point.

In his postgame press conference, Coach Drew highlighted rebounding as the key difference-maker.

Elsewhere, Jayden Nunn and Langston Love provided offensive production to the clip of 15 points and 10 points respectively.

Now Baylor will come home and regroup in the hopes of righting the ship against a very competitive No. 19 TCU squad on Saturday.

No midweek game before the 3 PM tip-off against the Horned Frogs should surely help.