LaceDarius Dunn went off and Quincy Acy continues to impress after starting last game.  Kevin Rogers had a solid game and Curtis Jerrells did a good job facilitating Dunn’s hot streak.  There’s not much to criticize when your team goes on the road and shoots better than 50% from beyond the arc and better than 50% overall.  Baylor’s defense was also much stronger, even when considering the weaker opponent we were facing.

Why Baylor Won:
We were the better team, and we showed it.  We started fast, we got them down early and we continued to make our shots.

Player of the Game:
Who else, but LaceDarius Dunn?  Great shooting and he made some big shots to answer runs that KSU tried to put together.  We need more of this from Dunn.

Who’s Up Next:
Baylor is now 3-1 on the season and has a huge task ahead of them, heading up to Norman to face Oklahoma.  The Griffin brothers will give Baylor fits on the inside and Austin Johnson and Willie Warren on the outside.  This is going to be an extremely tough game to win, and it’s going to take a big effort from the entire team.  Can we do it?  Of course I believe we can do it, but it’s going to take their best effort of the year.  This can be a statement game, or it can be a statement game.  Let’s hope the Bears go out there and make the right kind of statement.

Thanks,
Chris

Baylor allowed South Carolina to score 85 points on 54% shooting (57.1% on 3s) which is just an insane rate.  Only one player did not shoot 50% or better for South Carolina (Mitchell Carter was 0-1 in his 1 minute of playing time), so it’s not like one person was just tearing it up.

While this was a close game, it was far more disappointing to me than the UTA or Hartford games that were closer than they should have been.  We just did not play good enough defense by any stretch of imagination.  This team has too many talented seniors to let a team come into our house and score 85 points on them.  Especially a team that is not considered a conference championship challenger.

Why Baylor Lost:
Baylor chose not to play defense and wasn’t able to slow down any one player for South Carolina.  That’s really it.  You can gripe about only shooting ~70% on free throws or having Dunn in foul trouble, but we took more free throws than South Carolina did, and they shot less than 50% on their attempts.  Our guards weren’t the problem on the offensive end, so there’s not much arguing that Dunn would have significantly exceeded either Carter or Dugat’s 18 or 16 point performances.  We lost on the defensive end of the floor.

Player of the Game:
Curtis Jerrells, Tweety Carter, and Henry Dugat share in this honor, but they should also share in the responsibility of allowing Downey to shoot better than 50% on 19 attempts and score 23 points.

Who’s Up Next:
Texas Tech is coming in Saturday to start conference play before we head out on the road to face Texas A&M.  Tech has shown the ability to score points on people, but they drop games against some bad teams like Lamar and UTEP.  This should definitely be a win, but if we play defense against Tech like we did against South Carolina, we will be in a dogfight.

• Referring to an area as “fertile” or a group of recruits as “crop.” These are human beings, not perishible staple foods.
• You “stockpile” nuclear warheads, not position groups.
• Referring to anyone as a “Beast.” Newsflash people: most kids that can play division 1 football (especially on the OL or DL) are beasts compared to the 99.5% of the kids they play against in high school.  Go look at any high school roster.  It’s chock full of kids that go like 6′-230 that play offensive guard or DT. Of course a guy who is signed to a Big 12 school and goes 6′5- 285 is going to be “beast-like.”
• “This guy is the real deal.” If I had a dollar everytime I heard that about Aaron Karas I’d be a millionaire. That’s all I need to say about that.
• Rattling off cone drill times and power clean weights. As a local radio personality likes to say: “Watch the damn game.” Any clumsy fool can train his body to do measured exercises. I want to see a player put seperation between him and a defender. I want to see a player blow his opponnet off the line of scrimmage. I want to see him make people miss.

This is a good starting point. There are many more. Recruiting is probably 70% of what makes a coach successful. The best players generally win. On top of that, you need talented guys with some experience to play and build depth with. I randomly ran across this blog examining the 2005 and 2006 classes. These are the guys that should be starting this year as 4th and 5th year players. You can probably guess how they turned out.

Good news is that nobody played more than 27 minutes (Tweety Carter), and only 5 players played more than 20 minutes (Rogers, Jerrells, Dugat, and Dunn). Delbert Simpson was the only person not to log double digit minutes, so this was definitely a game that Drew got the bench players some work. Thank goodness!

Everyone that played tonight scored, and not counting Acy’s 0-4 (OUCH) performance at the free throw line, Baylor was perfect at the stripe. Kevin Rogers had a monster game going 10-13 from the field, scoring 21 points and grabbing 5 rebounds. Dugat nearly matched him with 20 points on 7-11 shooting and grabbing 3 rebounds to go with 4 assists and 0 turnovers. Carter had a great game dishing out 6 assists and doing all his damage from beyond the arc going 4-5 from 3pt land and finishing with 12 points.

While the Bears did give up 78 points to this Jackson State team, consider that a team like A&M that’s supposed to be a good defensive team (that’s what we always hear from those guys in B/CS, right?) gave up 78 points to this team, too. They beat Jackson State 96-78. When you have this many offensive possessions, you’re going to tend to give up a higher number of points. Our defensive numbers weren’t really bad, though. We held JSU to 39.4% shooting for the game (37.1% in the first half with the main rotation playing), and out-rebounded them by 10, something we haven’t been strong at this year. We also had 6 blocks on the night, 3 of those courtesy of Quincy Acy (who finished with 6 points and 8 rebounds to go with those blocks).

Why Baylor Won:
Baylor had vastly more talent, played hard and focused and never let up.  Even when the backups and bench players were in there, the pace was pushed and we kept going for the kill.  Good to see and if they can keep it up, it bodes well for conference play.  We’ll need that characteristic to stay away from losing games we shouldn’t lose.

Player of the Game:
Kevin Rogers and Henry Dugat both put up 20 or more points on fantastic shooting.  They combined for 41 points, 8 rebounds, 4 assists and zero turnovers.  They also shot a combined 71%

Who’s Up Next:
South Carolina comes to Waco Friday night and this will be our toughest test since maybe Washington State or Wake Forest.  Last year we had to come back and pull out an 8-point victory on the road.  We’ll have to play well and hard to handle them, and it’d be a great to ring in the new year with closing out the non-conference schedule with only one loss and a top 20 ranking.

After the last two games, we can hope that after this win the team was able to see that when they take their time, focus and play sound basketball, then they are going to be a very tough opponent to beat.  And while I’ve downplayed this homestand, Portland State is a pretty decent team that has the ability to take down very good teams (see their upset of Gonzaga last week).  This win will have a great effect on our RPI as Portland State should have a very good chance to win their conference and get into the tourney with a ton of wins.

Why Baylor Won:
Baylor got into the paint, had very good assist to turnover ratios for our guards, and watched Dunn shoot.  Seriously, Dunn was on fire last night, and his 22 points drove the Bears to this victory.  We still need more production from our post players (where has Acy gone?), but with enough guards that can light it up, we’re buying ourselves time to bring them along.  They will need to be awake when we head down to College Station, though.

Player of the Game:
LaceDarius Dunn was on fire, scoring 22 points on 73% shooting.  Jerrell (16pts, 6rbds, 4asts), Carter (6pts, 5asts), and Dugat (11pts, 5asts, 5rbds) all had nice games, but Dunn just filled it up.  He tied with Rogers and Jerrells for team-high in rebounds and only had 2 turnovers.

Who’s Up Next:
Baylor makes a quick turnaround, welcoming Jackson State to Waco tomorrow night.  This is really the last chance to get the post players some good experience working on offensive sets that focus on getting the ball into the paint before a tough games against South Carolina (1/2/09) and then the start of conference play.

First of all, this is great recognition for these two Baylor Bears.  They earned it and you could think, hmm, 12 teams; 25 spots; ~2 spots available per team; we’re right on pace!  I’m glad we got two players on there, and I hope we have some players step up next year to increase our numbers, but I also have to think that Joe Pawelek deserved some recognition on the list.

Here’s a breakdown of the list by position:

QB - 5
RB - 3
WR - 4
TE - 3
OL - 4
DL - 3
LB - 1
CB - 0
S - 2
P/K - 0

The list is clearly slanted toward offensive players (19/25), and it’s interesting to see that only 1 linebacker made the list.  It’s hard to compare across positions, but William Moore of Missouri made the list, and Joe Pawelek didn’t.  Joe Pa had 45 more tackles (54% more), 3 more interceptions and 1 more pass break up (from the LB spot opposed to the S spot), and recovered two fumbles.  It’s hard for me to find a good reason that Moore made the list over Pawelek, but that’s why all this stuff is opinion.

Let’s look at the breakdown of Big XII schools and how well each was represented on the list:

Oklahoma - 8
Missouri - 4
OSU - 4
Texas - 3
Baylor - 2
Nebraska - 2
Texas Tech - 2

Missing from the list entirely are Texas A&M, Kansas, Colorado, Kansas State and Iowa State.  Notice A&M is the only Big XII South team on the list.  Might be that their biggest producers were younger, and didn’t have the name.  Colorado, Kansas State, Kansas and Iowa State, one would think, would be able to field one of the top 25 players in the conference.  Freeman almost made the list, but was kept out because he is so erratic.  That would have also given the list 6 quarterbacks.

It’s also surprising to see Texas Tech with only two selections.  They share in the Big XII South title and only get the two obvious choices in.  Texas with only 4 had me raising my eyebrows, but then again, it’s hard to name a player that really should be on there without question.

Anybody care to chime in with their biggest snub?

Baylor came out and shot themselves into a hole with 17 three point attempts in the first half, and found themselves trailing by 9 points at the half to UTA.  Now, UTA is not an awful team, and in fact they have a very nice player in Anthony Vereen, but there’s no reason that we should be trailing the vast majority of this game.  Luckily, we were able to hit our free throws and we got the W, which is all that really matters.  There are few times when style points matter less than the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas.  Sports writers and coaches spend their “research” time looking for a W or an L, and little else.  They’ve got presents to buy, turkey to eat and plenty of travel as well.

Why Baylor Won:
Basically, Baylor played sensible offense.  After shooting 29.4% on 17 three point shots, the guys settled down and only took 7 in the second half (making 42.9% of them, 3), drove the ball, drew fouls and hit their free throws (18-22).  Baylor hit 50% of their 2-point shots in the second half and out-scored UTA 47-35 in the second half.

Player of the Game:
Curtis Jerrells was part of the problem in the first half, and really throughout the game, taking 6 threes and only hitting one, but there’s no doubt that he was also the reason that Baylor was able to pull this game out.  Besides grabbing 7 rebounds and dishing out 7 assists (against only 3 TOs), Jerrells was able to hit 16 of 17 FTs and put up 29 total points to secure the win.  His only miss gave UTA the opportunity to tie the game late, but we’re not really going to quibble about 94% shooting vs. 100% shooting at the foul line.  Since we won, that is. 

Who’s Up Next:
Hartford is in town for the game tonight.  Let’s hope we can put them away early and get ready for next week’s schedule, 3 games in 5 days.  I predict that by 9:15pm tonight, Baylor is 10-1.