WACO, Texas — The Baylor Men’s Basketball team (10-4, 0-2 Big 12) lost its Big 12 home opener against the No. 3 Iowa State Cyclones by a score of 70-60.
Cameron Carr scored 17 points for the Bears, but it was not enough to overcome a 19-for-62 shooting performance for the home team. This is the second straight game that Baylor scored under one point per possession.
Tamin Lipsey scored 24 points for Iowa State to lead all scorers, while the Cyclones’ Joshua Jefferson was the player of the game with 19 points and a monster 17 rebounds.
This is the second time in the last four seasons that Baylor has started Big 12 play 0-2. The last time was the 2022-23 season with Keyonte George when the Green and Gold started 0-3 in conference before rattling off six straight wins.
“I felt better about the effort. I felt better about how we competed,” said Scott Drew after the game, “Losing sucks. But Iowa State's a really good team, and if you ask me, right now them and Michigan are the two best teams in college basketball.”
The Bears got out of the gates well, going on an 8-0 run thanks to a pair of Cameron Carr threes and earning a 21-13 lead deep into the first half.
Iowa State finished the half with an 8-1 response to take a 25-24 lead into the locker room.
The start of the second half was when the No. 3 Cyclones showed their mettle, immediately launching into a 14-1 run to build a 14-point lead.
Caden Powell led the Bears through a 13-5 stretch, scoring six of his 11 points and cutting the deficit to six points. Powell finished with 11 rebounds for his 3rd double-double of the season.
Baylor would only come a single point closer to Iowa State courtesy of an Obi Agbim three before the Cyclones pulled away for good.
After the game, Tounde Yessoufou was asked what is missing for his Bears after the 0-2 start to Big 12 play. This was his answer:
“It sounds cliché to say, man, but just toughness. I think that's what it is. You know, offensively, obviously, we’ve just got to make some shots. That's something that we can fix … So it's something that we're going to work on together, but most likely just being the toughest team out there. Again, it's the Big 12. It's big boy basketball. That's what we signed up for. So we’ve got to be ready for it.”
Overall, this was Baylor’s worst offensive performance of the season, posting shooting splits of 31% from the field, 19% from three and 59% from the free throw line.
Missing 12 free throws is never helpful, but those misses can be added on to the large handful of missed layups for the Bears, not to mention a team assist-to-turnover ratio of 8-to-14. The Cyclones turned the Bears’ 14 turnovers into 20 points.
“There are a lot of layups we missed … layups and free throws,” said Coach Drew, “Iowa State is great defensively, but they didn't do anything on the free throw line. And I mean, you can't go 17-for-29, 58% at home, miss front ends of one-and-ones and beat a good team. You can't.”
The Bears now have two days to prepare for the No. 7 Houston Cougars. That game will tip off at the Foster Pavilion in Waco at 12 p.m. on Saturday and will be available for streaming on Peacock.
If your TV provider carries NBCSN, you can find some Peacock live events there as well, including the Bears vs. Cougars matchup on Saturday.
