The Bears went at Texas Tech tonight and pulled out a 57-52 victory. Both teams are tough defensively, so the low score was expected but what was not expected was how bad both teams were at the free throw line.
Attempts were scarce, but so were makes, just 9-17 for the Bears and 5-12 for Tech. Again, these are good teams, so you may not expect a lot of free throws but Baylor was shooting 71% going into today and Tech was at 76%. Five of Baylor’s misses came in the last 90 seconds to allow Tech to keep it interesting but they just didn’t have enough to pull it out.
The other shocking stat of the night was Baylor’s +18 rebounding advantage. The Bears have been strong on the boards all season, getting outrebounded just three times and winning all of those games. But Tech had only been outrebounded twice all season – in a narrow loss to Creighton and a blowout win against CSU Bakersfield – and no one had done this against the Raiders. Most damaging were the 16 offensive rebounds Baylor got. Even the best defensive team, and Tech is among those, is going to wear down when they have to play defense for much longer than 30 seconds.
Baylor will need all of that rebounding prowess when they head to Lawrence to take on the Jayhawks Saturday.