WACO, Texas — The Baylor Men’s Basketball team (10-5, 0-3 Big 12) was out-rebounded and out-muscled by the visiting No. 7 Houston Cougars to the tune of a 77-55 loss on Saturday.
The loss puts Baylor at 0-3 in Big 12 play for the first time since the 2022-23 season. That year, the Bears rattled off six straight wins to break their slump. After the game, head coach Scott Drew did not sound very hopeful that that feat could be repeated with the current team.
“I think this team's got a lot of unique challenges that we probably haven't had since our first year,” later adding, “There's a lot of things that concern me right now, but I think, I think it snowballed on us today.”
Drew also noted, “We thought our effort was really good against Iowa State. And I think everybody can get amped up for one game. But it's what can you sustain?”
Baylor was led in scoring by Cameron Carr, who put up 18 points while Tounde Yessoufou chipped in 11 points. The freshman was the only other Bear with more than six points.
For the No. 7 Cougars, redshirt senior guard Emanuel Sharp led all scorers with 17 points. Junior forward Joseph Tugler scored 12 and grabbed 11 rebounds to earn a double-double, and three more cougars hit double-figure scoring.
Baylor fans were given some reason to hope in the first five minutes of the game as the Green and Gold jumped out to a 14-6 lead. Foster Pavilion was loud and there was great energy throughout the building.
Then Houston asserted their dominance.
The Cougars made an 11-0 run and then stretched it to a 23-3 kill shot, putting the Bears down 29-17.
The second half offered no respite for Baylor, with Kelvin Sampson’s squad bullying the Bears 28-9 through the first 11 minutes of the half. The lead grew as large as 29 points before things settled down.
Rebounding and hustle led to the domination for Houston. The Cougars won the boards 45-34 overall, including a 23-10 offensive rebounding advantage that led to 33 more shots for the visitors. Those extra shots and offensive rebounds led to 19 second-chance points for Houston.
“We came in one of the top offensive rebounding teams in the country, and we didn't do our job,” said Coach Drew, “They did theirs. You take off points off turnovers, that's 31. You take off second chance points, that's 19. That's 50 points right there. That's by far and away the game. And we’ve got to get better at not turning the ball over for sure.”
Final shooting numbers for the Bears were 15-41 from the field, 7-19 from three and 18-31 from the free throw line. Houston shot 29-74 from the field, 11-39 from deep and 8-13 on free throws.
The 15 made field goals are the fewest a Baylor team has had in a game since a 2013 trip to Kansas, where the Bears only made 13 buckets in a 61-44 loss to the Jayhawks.
As for the turnovers, Baylor had 16 while Houston had just five. That is a bad recipe for competitiveness, let alone winning.
To make matters worse, Baylor forward Dan Skillings went down with an injury in the second half and did not return to the bench after going to the locker room, hopping on one leg. The Bears' eight-man rotation will be back down to seven, making things even tougher on Scott Drew to recover from this 0-3 start to conference play.
“You'd like to have a crazy, hard practice tomorrow,” said Coach Drew when asked about how to move forward, “but you play on Tuesday and then, and then you play on Friday, so really, you're doing more learning through film now and and less on being able to have a three, four hour practice and get better.”
The Tuesday matchup is a game at Oklahoma State. Bears at Cowboys tips off on Tuesday at 8 p.m. on the CBS Sports Network. Following that, Baylor plays at Kansas on Friday evening.
