Baylor Crashes Out of Big 12 Tournament with 83-79 First Round Loss to Arizona State
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The Baylor Men’s Basketball team may have put the final nail in the coffin of its postseason hopes with an 83-79 loss to the Arizona State Sun Devils in the first round of the Big 12 Tournament.
Cameron Carr led all scorers with 25 points for the Bears, but Baylor’s defense let them down, allowing five ASU players to score double-digit points. Maurice Odom, the Sun Devils’ leading scorer on the season, also scored nine while dealing with foul trouble.
The No. 12-seeded Sun Devils built an early 21-10 to ten lead thanks to great three-point shooting and a Baylor squad that had not settled into the game quickly.
About 12 minutes into the game, Baylor had as many made field goals (5) as Arizona State had made threes. The result was a 27-14 deficit for the green and gold.
An 11-2 run for Baylor brought things back to 29-25 with just under six minutes left before the break, but ASU’s shooting spiked again and saw the Sun Devils into the locker room with a 44-35 lead.
“Credit Arizona State. They really came out, shot the ball well,” said Baylor head coach Scott Drew after the game. “Defensively, we weren't as sharp as we needed to be. But they made shots. And at the end of the day, to shoot 61%, 46% from three in the first half, regardless of the defense, they came out on point and took it to us.”
Baylor’s issue with slow second-half starts also reared its ugly head as the Bears allowed a quick 6-0 spurt for ASU to start the second half.
With postseason tournament hopes — whether NCAA, College Basketball Crown or NIT — on the line, Baylor did nothing to help their resumé.
The lead for the Sun Devils got as large as 15 points before the Bears started slowly clawing their way back into the game.
Isaac Williams scored nine of his 15 points in the second half. But he also spent all five of his fouls in his 13 minutes of play that period.
Tounde Yessoufou scored eight of his 14 points during the attempted comeback, while Caden Powell and Dan Skillings both scored six of their respective 10 points in the second half as well.
Baylor got the game back to a one-possession deficit at 667-64 with just under six minutes to play, but the comeback bid quickly fell apart.
Over the next four minutes, Arizona State went on an 11-2 run to all but seal the game.
Time will tell if the Sound Devils also sealed the Bears’ fate when it comes to postseason tournament bids.
