Baylor Cruises Past Texas Southern, 72-59

WACO, Texas -- Al Freeman scored 21 points and ignited a key run that finally put No. 23 Baylor in control on way to a 72-59 victory over Texas Southern on Tuesday.

The Bears (10-2), in their final game before opening Big 12 Conference play, led only 44-40 in the second half before Freeman made a layup and then hit a 3-pointer to start a 10-0 run. By time Johnathan Motley made a short jumper for his first points and Lester Medford made a 3, it was 54-40 with 11:11 left.

Rico Gathers had 11 points and 10 rebounds for his 30th career double-double for Baylor. Terry Maston had 14 points and Medford 12.

Malcolm Riley scored 18 for Texas Southern (1-11).

TSU was scheduled to host Hampton at home on Dec. 31st but the contest has been cancelled.

The Tigers will face the Southern Jaguars at home on Saturday, Jan. 2nd at the HPE Arena at 7:30 pm.

BOX SCORE



TEXAS SOUTHERN POSTGAME QUOTES

Head Coach Mike Davis
On what positives he saw in the team…
“I liked our effort. We talked about giving great effort to get ready for our conference play. We hadn’t played the big name schools that we played last year, but Stephen F. Austin is really good. They won their conference last year. Central Michigan won their conference last year, so we replaced the mid major schools for the big names that we played last year. I’ll take this loss because we’ve been working so hard on the zone offense over Christmas break. We really haven’t worked on man offense lately, so when they went to that man defense it really changed our rhythm. We weren’t patient in our man offense the way we were in our zone offense. I want to see us play better while giving this much effort.”

On maintaining a good zone offense…
“We did a good job of preparing for the zone and being patient in our offense. When they went to the man defense it got us out of our rhythm. Then when they went back to the zone defense and we lost our rhythm against the zone because of what Coach Drew did by switching to man. It was a great game plan. We hadn’t worked on man offense in a while, so we didn’t get the ball moving from side to side like we wanted to. So, when he went back to the zone we still didn’t have any ball movement. However, I think we gave the best effort that we’ve given all year. We just ran out of gas. That’s no excuse, but because we had to play at such a high level, we ran out of gas. But, that’s the level that I want us to play at.”

COURTESY BAYLOR UNIVERSITY ATHLETICS MEDIA RELATIONS