Baylor Basketball: Beachin’ Bears I
Part 1: The Men travel to the Bahamas while the Women spend their Thanksgiving in Cancun
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Happy Thanksgiving friends! I just want to say how thankful I am for each of you reading this newsletter; I appreciate the opportunity to share significant and interesting sports tidbits with you.
I hope that you are able to celebrate with those close to you. That, and to watch a whole lot of football and basketball.
Baylor Men
The last time Coach Scott Drew and the Bears were in Atlantis was in 2016, when they battled back from deficits against VCU (8 points), No. 24 Michigan State (3 points) and No. 10 Louisville (22 points) to win the Battle 4 Atlantis Championship.
Maybe slow starts and comebacks in the Bahamas are just what Baylor is accustomed to.
Arizona State go out to a fast start in the final quarterfinal of the day, leading the Bears 18-12 seven minutes into the game. Despite being short handed, the Sun Devils reminded everyone that all it takes is for one guy to get hot to provide the confidence needed to pull off an upset.
With the game tied at 23 with 8:29 to play in the fist half, Baylor went on a 22-8 run to take a 14-point lead into the locker room. It was spearheaded by hot three-point shooting from Adam Flagler, James Akinjo, Kendall Brown and LJ Cryer—who lead the team for the fourth straight game with 15 points on the evening.
DJ Horne kept Arizona State in the contest with a game-high 20 points on 7-of-10 shooting, including 6-of-9 from beyond the arc. He was the only Sun Devil to score in double figures.
Baylor looked a little flat in their half court offensive sets and struggled the generate offense. Too much one-on-one isolation dribbling and forced shots resulted in stale offense that could doom the Bears in the future.
I asked Arizona State head coach Bobby Hurley how he evaluated the success of his half court defense against the Bears.
“I thought we did a decent job. We wanted them to, again, shoot contested shots… we had a few errors, a couple of breakdowns. Giving up 75 against them, with as much firepower they have, I thought we did a pretty good job. We just couldn’t overcome the turnovers and the points we gave away. You can’t give away points against a team that’s this good.”
Two things allowed Baylor to widen the gap on their second consecutive Pac-12 opponent. The first was the energy that Jonathan Tchamwa Tchatchoua brought to the court off the bench.
Coach Drew said, “I think [one of] Jon’s biggest strengths—and every player has their set of strengths—is first and foremost his motor. When he comes in he plays so hard, he always practices so hard. I know we get used to it because he’s consistent with it…when we go to the bench we get stronger because our bench is playing against their bench and normally that’s an advantage for us.”
Everyday Jon only had three points in 17 minutes, but provided critical, high IQ plays that are not recorded in the box score. His defense forced an ASU drive right into another Baylor defender for an easy steal and fast break layup; grabbed key rebounds and set at least two screens that resulted in wide open made jump shots for his teammates.
When asked about these ‘winning plays’ Jonathan made, Coach Drew took it a step further to explain that the Bears are this good because every player sacrifices to make these winning plays.
“That’s the great thing about everybody that steps on the court, they all provide their strengths and they all, first and foremost, play for their teammates. They all make a lot of winning plays that don’t show up in the stat books and that’s why we win a lot of games is cause they’re winners.”
The second was that Baylor continued to apply their high pressure defense. Besides Horne hitting tough shots, the Sun Devis were not doing much else as they turned the ball over 15 times. Ten of those were steals by the Bears, which allowed them to jump start their transition offense and get their world class athletes in space.
Baylor scored 16 points off those 15 Arizona State turnovers, and 14 came on the fast break. The Sun Devils turned the ball over 11 times in the first half, which led to a dozen points for the Bears. That was the ultimate deciding factor in the 75-63 contest, which Coach Hurley mentioned as points Arizona State ‘gave away’.
Just about everyone contributed for Baylor, as five Bears scored in double figures: Cryer (15), Matthew Mayer (14), Flagler (13), Flo Thamba (11), and Brown (10). For Thamba it was a career high in 23 minutes (also a career high).
Akinjo had nine points and seven assists; and while Jeremy Sochan had no points on 0-of-7 shooting, he did gather a team high nine boards and added three assists.
Baylor will take on VCU in the semifinals; they will play either No. 22 UConn or Michigan State on Friday.
Baylor Women
With new head coach Nicki Collen at the helm, the Bears began their season with three straight wins before losing in College Park to No. 3 Maryland. NaLyssa Smith dropped 30 points—at one point scoring nine in a row for Baylor— and added 15 rebounds in a comeback effort that fell just short.
The girls are in Cancun with three pre-scheduled games against Fordham, Arizona State and Houston. They begin on Thanksgiving morning versus the Fordham Rams who are 3-1 with wins over Seton Hall and Michigan State.
Baylor should still be heavily favored to win all three games. And though fans should feel very confident with their past performance against the Terps, Baylor is still working to adjust and build chemistry on a team that has a new coach, two new guards who transferred in, and retaining three five-star Class of ‘22 post-forward players who are more used to Kim Mulkey’s style of pounding the rock inside and not spacing the floor so much to shoot upwards of 25-30 three-pointers per game.
With each game there should ideally—and optimistically—be improvement in the new modern style of basketball the Bears will play.
Again, have a Happy Thanksgiving, and be sure to enjoy the Egg Bowl!
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