Baylor Basketball Looked Like Top-25 Team Last Night, But Their Best Wasn't Enough
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The Bears played an unrecognizable brand of basketball last night, and the Arizona Wildcats were clearly caught off guard, allowing the Baylor backcourt of Cameron Carr and Isaac Williams to give the Bears an 8-point lead early on.
But some offensive rebounds and excellent shooting late in the game edged the Wildcats past the Bears in the Foster Pavilion.
Where did this aggressiveness come from?
This was a very physical game, and the Bears were the aggressors for the majority of the game. Williams was driving the ball as I have never seen before. I thought Caden Powell did a great job against the 7'2 Motiejus Krivas, who was limited to 4 rebounds.
Even Michael Rataj was playing up to his potential, ripping down seven rebounds amongst the trees. Not to mention Cameron Carr, who led the game with 26 points while only turning it over twice.
Turnovers have been an Achilles' heel for the Bears this season, averaging 11.7 per game. Last night was an outlier, giving it away only 5 times, which also goes to show something was different about this game.
Was this the final kick for the Bears?
Yet again, the Bears left it all out there, but they took another gut punch, outlasted by the Wildcats on their home court.
Honestly, I thought the Bears were just going to come out flat and get walked by the big bad Wildcats, but it was not the case. Baylor raised some serious questions for the #2 team in the country, who looked like a team that would be on upset watch in the NCAA tournament.
The Bears have three games left in the season, and they are all winnable if they play with the energy they had against Arizona. It could easily go the other way; as the heartbreaking losses stack up, it will be easy to roll over and cruise through the rest of the season.
How the Bears hold themselves for the rest of the season will be a testament to the culture that Scott Drew has built over the season and the resilience of the players.
A glimpse of what could have been
BU Basketball showed what they are made of last night. If this game had been played earlier in the season, it would have been much less devastating, as it felt like the Bears put it all together and competed against an elite team.
With most of the season in the rearview, it's easy to wonder what this team could have been if they had started playing this brand of basketball in December.
Bennett is an undergrad student at Baylor University, studying journalism on the sports track. He is from the DFW area and grew up playing and watching sports, which inspired him to pursue sports writing.
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