Bears Knock Out the Pokes and the Lights in 74-58 Win

WACO, Texas — The Baylor Men’s Basketball team (12-5, 2-3) surged past the visiting Oklahoma State Cowboys (9-8, 1-4) 74-58, despite a brief loss of power in the Ferrell Center and the larger Waco area Saturday.

The Baylor offense spread the wealth tonight with four of the five starters in double figures led by LJ Cryer’s 16-point outing. Jalen Bridges and Flo Thamba both had 12 points and Adam Flagler chipped in 11.

Coming off of their first conference win of the season on Wednesday, the Bears took it to the Pokes early, building a 13-0 lead by the first media timeout.

Oklahoma State would fight back though, taking advantage of Baylor’s bench to close the deficit down to 17-15 about halfway through the first half.

The starters came back in and reset the tone, making a 12-2 run and pushing the lead back to 34-19. 

Thanks to great three-point shooting (8-for-15), free throw shooting (9-for-10) and rebounding 22-to-13, the Bears took a 39-23 lead into the locker room at the half.

In the second half, the green and gold grew the 16-point halftime lead to as large as 28 even with a brief power outage pausing the game with 11 minutes to go.

From there, Scott Drew’s squad eased to the finish with the final scoreline being 74-58. 

After the game, the two teams’ head coaches could not have felt more differently about what they saw on the court. 

“Far and away out worst performance collectively,” said Pokes head man Mike Boynton, “and I don’t think there’s anything to point to to feel good about.”

Meanwhile, Scott Drew said “Today there’s a reason we won. We executed. And It’s one thing to play hard, it’s another thing to play smart. We did both of them today.”

After getting their first conference win, the Bears looked looser and more confident on the court today. An observation shared by leading scorer LJ Cryer.

“I felt like everything started to settle down,” said Cryer, “I felt like everybody, from my perspective, was uptight after the losses… after getting that win I felt like we kinda loosened up and we’re getting back to having fun again.”

The fun feeling and confidence will be important to take with them into their next game, a trip to Lubbock to face Texas Tech in one of the toughest road environments in the Big 12. That game tips off at 8 PM CST on Tuesday and will be televised on ESPNU.