By Foster Nicholas | Sports Writer
AUSTIN — For the final time, No. 9 Baylor men’s basketball moseyed to Austin to take on Texas as Big 12 rivals. In a tight contest that came down to the last second, Longhorn junior guard Tyrese Hunter raced to the cup and stunned the Bears at the buzzer, lifting Texas to a 75-73 win on Saturday afternoon in the Moody Center.
“I keep saying it, [but this is] another Big 12 game — great highs, great lows,” Baylor head coach Scott Drew said. “It’s an inch here, an inch there, and everything’s different.
“But we have to do a better job executing down the stretch. We’re 5-3 in close games, so it’s not like we haven’t been good in close games. But on the road, you have to be better.”
Now 13-3 in the last 16 matchups against the Longhorns (13-5, 2-3 Big 12), Drew and the Bears (14-4, 3-2 Big 12) finished with four players in double figures. Freshman guard Ja’Kobe Walter led all scorers with 22 points, making five of 12 field goals and hitting nine free throws. Walter also led Baylor with seven rebounds and two steals.
“I definitely had a chip on my shoulder coming into this game, but I didn’t want to let that affect how I played,” Walter, a native of McKinney, said. “I really just focused on the team more than anything. I had a little mindset coming in that I wanted to prove that we are the better team in Texas.”
Senior forward Jalen Bridges added 17 and went 5 of 9 from the floor, all of which were shots taken behind the arc. For his highest output in Big 12 play, junior guard Jayden Nunn scored 15 points and tacked on five boards. Redshirt sophomore guard Langston Love finished in double figures for the fifth-consecutive game with 10 points off the bench.
Scoring came quick in Austin as first-half offense was abundant, specifically from 3-point range. At the end of 20 minutes, the Longhorns had made 9-of-11 long balls, just one shy of the most allowed by the Bears in a single game. At the same time, Baylor drilled seven of its 12 first-half 3-pointers.
“In games like this, when it’s a big matchup, everybody’s going to perform, and I think that showed in the first half, going back and forth, back and forth,” Walter said.
Walker (14) and Nunn (13) accounted for 66% of the Bears’ first-half offense, and Love’s four points were the only bench points the team got in the half. All things considered, Baylor only trailed by one at halftime, 42-41.
While the first half was full of offense, the Longhorns failed to make a 3-pointer in the second half (0 of 8), with several also failing to hit the rim. The Bears, who entered the day with the third-best 3-point shooting in the nation in terms of percentage, went 4 for 10 in the second half and finished the game hitting half of their deep shots.
As each team landed blows back and forth, the offense shifted more to the interior. The Bears allowed 18 points in the paint during the second half, with neither team taking a lead greater than six.
Leading 58-52, the Bears suddenly hit the brakes. Baylor went on a stretch without a field goal for more than nine minutes, only finding offensive production at the free-throw line. With Walter, Nunn and Love going a combined 9-for-10 from the foul stripe during that stretch, Baylor was down 73-70, and the shot clock was turned off.
Texas called timeout with 14 seconds on the game clock. The Bears took the court once more, and after swinging the ball around, Bridges picked up his dribble on the left wing, took a step back and uncorked a deep, double-clutch 3-pointer with a hand in his face.
Bridges’ shot swished home, evening the game at 73 points apiece with five seconds on the clock.
But in the blink of an eye, the silence of the Moody Center was short-lived. Hunter sprinted down the court with 5.1 seconds to work with. His right hand powering the ball past half court and into the paint, Hunter wove his way to the rack and scored the game-winning bucket at the buzzer.
“I thought it was really good to Big 12 game down the stretch,” Drew said. “Hindsight, I should’ve called timeout with the five seconds, make sure we set our defense. We didn’t want to give them a chance to draw something up, but obviously, anything would have been better than a layup. That’s on me.”
Clanking off the glass and rattling inside the rim, the Longhorns stole the last laugh in regulation by a score of 75-73. The Bears’ next shot against the Longhorns will be on March 4 when Texas pays its first-ever visit to the Foster Pavilion.
“We’re just trying to stay positive in the locker room, stay together, no negative thoughts,” Walter said. “[We’re] just going to get back to Waco, get back in the lab, get better and learn from it.”
The Bears will have a week to regroup before hosting TCU (13-5, 2-3 Big 12) on Saturday. Tipoff is scheduled for 3 p.m. in the Foster Pavilion.
