By Jackson Posey | Sports Writer
It happened again in Tucson.
Baylor, then the No. 25 team in the nation, walked into halftime at Arizona’s McKale Center with a 42-19 deficit. A blazing second half featuring 51 points, a season-high against a major-conference opponent, wasn’t nearly enough to overcome it. The Bears lost 81-70, dropping to 3-2 in conference play and out of the AP poll for the fourth week this season.
“There was a lot of pointing [fingers] and blaming someone else for what is going on,” junior center Josh Ojianwuna said Friday. “But I feel like, at the end of the day, we came out in the second half with a different energy. And I feel like we need to start [having] the same half you have in the first half … in the second half.”
The finger-pointing came amidst continued adversity for the Bears (11-6, 3-3 Big 12), whose preseason top-10 spot in the AP poll plunged amidst a spree of injuries and one of the toughest schedules in the nation. Fifth-year big man Norchad Omier, who leads the team in points and rebounds, pointed to the team’s response against Arizona as one that needs to be addressed by the team’s veteran leaders.
“There’s a lot of stuff we gotta handle in the locker room, and that’s one of them,” Omier said. “We just gotta put that aside and keep looking forward. That was not good, but we gotta put it aside if we wanna win. At the end of the day, I want to win, and I think everybody else in the locker room wants to win too. So, we just gotta keep moving forward.”
After the game, head coach Scott Drew gave the team two days off to rest, “refresh” and watch film. “Film doesn’t lie,” he said, and there were a lot of hard truths to swallow from the first half. The second half painted a better picture.
“Anytime you’re embarrassed like that, you tend to point fingers,” Drew said. “But the good teams don’t. They find a way. And second half, I thought we did a great job in competing and finding a way to be more successful.”
But for the first time this year, the Bears lost back-to-back games with a 74-71 loss to TCU on their home floor Sunday evening.
Consistency hasn’t been easy to come by for the Bears. In 11 games against power-conference opponents, the green and gold have won both halves twice: home games against Utah and Cincinnati, teams tied for second-last in the Big 12. They shot a combined 33% from the field in Waco.
“At the end of the day, it just comes down to being a team, playing together,” Ojianwuna said of the Arizona game. “Nothing changed for us, offensive-wise, during the second half. It was still the same plays we were running. … I feel like we don’t have to be down 23 points to actually play together as a team, and having a good team chemistry will actually help us a lot.”
The analytics say the Bears should improve. They rank 17th in KenPom’s adjusted offensive efficiency ratings and 58th defensively. Their overall rating is nearly good enough to crack the top 20 nationally, slotting in a few spots behind past opponent St. John’s (No. 18) and above UConn (No. 30). But the Bears have also been the third-worst team nationally at playing up to high-level competition.
Adjusted for opponent, Baylor has been the third-worst team in the country at playing up to good competition, per @EvanMiya — and two of the Bears' 3 conference wins have come against other teams in the bottom four.
(A positive spin? They've been smoking everybody else.)#SicEm pic.twitter.com/kjOES1cMuf
— Jackson Posey ✞ (@ByJacksonPosey) January 18, 2025
Some of that has to do with the sheer volume of high-caliber opponents Baylor has played: the nation’s third-toughest schedule, per KenPom, including bouts with six different top-30 teams outside the friendly confines of Foster Pavilion. That’ll tank the numbers. But until the Bears can get healthy, recovering looks like a herculean task.
Fifth-year forward Jalen Celestine made his return to the court on Sunday after not playing since tweaking his ankle against Utah on Dec. 31. Redshirt junior guard Langston Love, who missed much of the offseason recovering from an injury, is sidelined again with more ankle problems. (It’s been a “ten-month process” for Love, head coach Scott Drew said earlier this month.) Freshman wing VJ Edgecombe has missed time, as has fifth-year guard Jeremy Roach. For a team with eight consistent rotation players, multiple injuries at once can be devastating.
“We as a team, we miss having Langston and Jalen on the court,” Ojianwuna said. “[But] if you look at our bench, they’re always encouraging us and being happy for us and clapping for everyone. So I feel like we’re also feeling a positive energy coming from the bench, from those two guys.”
There’s plenty of time to re-track the train and pick up steam. With an explosive offense and arsenal of 3-point shooters, the Bears don’t need much runway to take flight. They just need to give themselves a chance.
“When you’re playing fewer guys, your margin of error’s less,” Drew said. “That’s the strength in numbers and having a bench. Not everybody shoots well every game, not everybody plays well every game, sometimes matchups favor other people. And that’s why it’s always great to have more weapons rather than less.”
The Bears will be back in action against Kansas State at 8 p.m. Wednesday in Foster Pavilion.
