No. 15 Baylor’s zone defense shuts down TCU in ugly defeat, 62-54

TCU couldn’t complete the season sweep of No. 15 Baylor as the Bears shut down the Horned Frogs’ offense in an ugly 62-54 loss at Schollmaier Arena Monday night.

TCU won the first matchup in Waco, a 105-102 triple-overtime thriller on Jan. 27.

Despite a tightly contested first half Monday night, there was no fantastic finish this time between the Big 12 rivals as Baylor used its 3-point shooting and zone defense to pull away in the second half.

“Give Baylor credit,” coach Jamie Dixon said. “We knew they were going to run some zone, they played a bunch of zone in the last game. We run the same zone actually and we just didn’t get it done in a variety of ways.”

TCU only trailed 32-31 with 17:55 remaining in the game despite a shaky offensive showing and being short-handed without starting center Ernest Udeh.

But the Horned Frogs’ offense went go on a nearly/ four-minute scoring drought as Baylor increased its lead to 42-31.

It was just a preview of what was to come as Baylor’s lead would grow as large as 59-41 with less than five minutes left on the clock.

TCU wasn’t able to get within 10 points after the 13:15 mark until the final 10 seconds. It was a disappointing showing for TCU, which had a chance to strengthen its hold on the No. 4 seed for the Big 12 Tournament in the Kansas City in March.

“We didn’t do anything we wanted to do,” Dixon said. “That’s on me, you have a gameplan, you have an attack plan for what you want to do. Your job is to get them to do it and I didn’t get them to do it.”

The Horned Frogs entered the day in a three-way tie with Baylor and Texas Tech for the No. 4 spot, but now fall to 8-7 in conference play which sets up a huge road matchup at BYU on Saturday. The Cougars are 7-7 in Big 12 play with a game at Kansas before facing TCU.

Walter’s response

Baylor guard Ja’Kobe Walter is viewed as one of the top one-and-done prospects in the country, but he didn’t have a great game the first time he faced the Horned Frogs. TCU held Walter to just 2-of-12 from the field in the win in Waco, but shutting down a potential lottery pick two times is difficult.

The freshman from McKinney had a much better showing on Tuesday as he hit key shot after key shot during Baylor’s decisive run in the second half. Walter scored five points from the free-throw line in the opening two minutes of the second half, which gave him confidence after a shaky first half. After turning down an open 3, Walter went baseline and threw down a two-handed slam to move Baylor ahead 34-31.

Then Walter knocked down two 3-pointers as TCU went from being down one possession to 50-33 with 11:25 remaining. Walter scored 16 points with 13 coming in the second half. Fellow NBA prospect Yves Missi also added 16 for the Bears.

Problematic zone

Down a few players Baylor relied on a matchup zone and early on TCU had success, making four of its first eight shots. However as the game wore on, the Bears began to tighten the defense. Baylor suffocated TCU’s ball-handlers in the corners and when they tried to attack baseline while lazy passes were picked off at the top of the zone and turned into points.

TCU shot below 30% in the first half and coming out of halftime it looked like the Horned Frogs may have found some answers as Emanuel Miller hit a 3 and Jameer Nelson knocked down a mid-range jumper to cut TCU’s deficit to 29-28. However, from that point the offense turned lifeless. After a Xavier Cork bucket inside made it 32-30, the Horned Frogs would miss 10 of their next 11 attempts.

Some of it was just not getting a friendly bounce on the rim as a number of shots rolled in and out, but most of the problem was the Baylor defense that kept TCU out of the paint and forced multiple turnovers. The Horned Frogs had at least three stretches where they went nearly four minutes without a point. One such lull is enough to sink you against a top-15 team, let alone multiple.

“They played hard on defense, they threw the zone out for 40 minutes and we just had no answer,” Miller said. “This loss hurts, it definitely stings. We’ve got to learn from this game and we’ve got to understand teams are going to be watching this game and see that we struggle against zone. We’re going to go over this and it won’t happen again.”

Back-and-forth half

There were fireworks at the start of the second matchup between the rivals as both teams delivered a number of highlights. Baylor started the game hot from 3, making five of its first six field goals from behind the arc. Jalen Bridges sparked the Bears offense early as he made three 3-pointers from the same spot in the left corner.

On the opposite end TCU was putting on a dunk show as Cork soared to throw down a dunk on an offensive rebound. Then Nelson had arguably the play of the year as he slashed down the lane and rose up to dunk over Missi. The Bears started to pull away and took a 21-16 lead midway through the first half after four straight points from Missi.

However, the Horned Frogs roared back with a 7-0 run to go back in front with 6:11 remaining before halftime. Unfortunately for the fans at Schollmaier Arena, the game quality dropped significantly as both offenses began to struggle. In the final six minutes the teams scored just four points; TCU went scoreless for six minutes and the Bears went 4:58 without a bucket.

Despite the lackluster offense, TCU only trailed 25-23 behind one of the best defensive halves of the year.