WACO, Texas — The Baylor Bears had a late game in their first game of the Big 12 tournament against Cincinnati.
The Bears found themselves down early at 10-1 and didn't make a shot for nearly the first 10 minutes of the game. Despite the struggles, Baylor only found themselves down by two at the half and made big second half adjustments to come away with the win.
"The only downside to the double bye is that first half, you got to get them jitters out and get used to everything and I think the second half was a lot truer to who we are offensively scoring 44 points instead of 24," head coach Scott Drew said.
"You're definitely like anxious because you want to play and you're a little jittery. But, I mean, also we're blessed to be in the position. We are and have that two day bye," RayJ Dennis said.
A hard fought win for the bears, but those glaring first half problems will need to be adjusted if they want to make it to the Big 12 championship.
"Unfortunately, there's a lot of teams that want to win it too," Drew said. "I think second half is definitely how we're gonna have to play...and moving forward if we're gonna be in this tournament and, probably aren't gonna survive if we have another half like we did the first half," he said.
Baylor advances to the semifinals for the first time since the 2021 season. Their next obstacle is the seventh ranked Iowa State Cyclones.
"We played everybody. So at least you got the cliff notes version of what you need to do. Defensively, both Cincinnati and Iowa State do have some commonalities. Both of them really aggressive," Drew added.
Tip-off between the Bears and Iowa State is at 8:30 p.m.
