WACO, Texas — Baylor Men’s Basketball (9-2) used a 71-point second-half explosion to ease past the visiting Southern Jaguars (4-8) by a score of 111-67.
Freshman guard Tounde Yessoufou led the Bears with a career-high 28 points on top of eight rebounds and six assists. Meanwhile, Cameron Carr put up 22 points, six rebounds, and six assists for his seventh 20+ point game this season.
It was a very clean game from Scott Drew’s Bears, with the Green and Gold only turning the ball over four times while assisting on 28 of 37 made buckets.
“I thought in the half court, we really executed well,” said Coach Drew, “They do a great job defensively in really swarming in the ball … so our number one objective was to not let them have those opportunities. And our guys did a really good job with four turnovers. I mean, every coach takes that every day of the week.”
Despite the lack of turnovers, the Bears were not happy with their offense in the first half, shooting 13-33 from the field and scoring 40 points.
So what led to the offensive outburst in the second half?
“It's definitely the energy. I feel like we're just more attentive to detail,” said Cameron Carr after the game, “I feel like we were a little slow coming out, so just taking care of what's in front of us. I feel like we emphasized that at halftime. And just figuring out what they were falling asleep on, then just going at it over and over again.”
As is typical this season, Baylor spread the wealth on offense with three other Bears reaching double figures in points: Dan Skillings with 17, Obi Agbim with 12 and Isaac Williams with 11.
On what was tabbed as “254-day” by Baylor, Waco native Caden Powell grabbed another team-high 15 rebounds just two days after snaring a career-high 16 boards against Alcorn State. Consistent rebounding should not be underrated.
And if all the aforementioned Bears had fun piling up the stats, then Will Kuykendall and Drew Perry likely had the most fun on the team today. Kuykendall nailed back-to-back threes in the closing minutes before Perry put the cherry on top of this Sunday with a tough three of his own.
Scott Drew’s squad can now take some time to rest and enjoy time with their families for the holidays before getting things restarted against Arlington Baptist on December 29th.
