No. 16 Bears lament blown chances at fieldhouse

Baylor head coach Scott Drew gets his team's attention during the first half, Saturday, Feb. 14, 2015 at Allen Fieldhouse.

Trailing by two points with just over six minutes remaining in a game they led for the first 23 minutes, the Baylor Bears got back-to-back open three-point looks from Taurean Prince on the same possession.

But instead of being the guy who put Baylor back in front as the game neared crunch time, Prince misfired twice — one wide open shot from the left corner and the other from the wing in front of the Baylor bench — and the 16th-ranked Bears fell to No. 8 Kansas, 74-64, at Allen Fieldhouse.

Although there were dozens of plays that helped shape that final score, those two misses were a focal point of the Bears’ post-game meeting with the media.

• Box score

“Just execution, as always,” said Baylor bruiser Rico Gathers when asked to pinpoint what went wrong late. “Whenever you’re down two, if you’re gonna take that three-pointer you better be able to hit it.”

Added Baylor guard Kenny Chery, who scored 17 points but made just 6 of 15 shots: “We got the shots we wanted. They just didn’t go in.”

That certainly was not the story in the game’s opening minutes. Baylor, which lost to KU, 56-55, in Waco, Texas, in early January, raced out to leads of 18-6 and 25-12 while watching shot after shot go in during the first half. The Jayhawks trimmed Baylor’s lead to six by halftime, but the Bears (18-7 overall, 6-6 Big 12) went to the locker room feeling great about their position.

“We just wanted to come out being aggressive,” Chery said. “We knew we were playing in a hostile environment and we just wanted to stay together and that’s what we did.”

Baylor coach Scott Drew, working with half a voice due to a recent illness — “Officials love it, players love it, because they can’t hear me,” Drew quipped — said KU’s toughness also played a role in the outcome. Gathers, who entered the game averaging 14 rebounds per game in Big 12 play, including six offensive, finished with eight total and grabbed just two on the offensive glass.

“They’re a physical team,” Drew said of KU. “Coach (Bill) Self always does a good job coaching guys and making sure guys don’t get easies. You gotta beat them. And Rico definitely had to work for every offensive rebound tonight.”

Added Gathers: “They did a good job hitting the boards tonight. A lot of the shots that were taken weren’t really bouncing my way. They made it tough tonight, but that didn’t have anything to do with why we lost.”

KU’s offensive balance may have. Kelly Oubre Jr. and Perry Ellis led the Jayhawks with 18 points apiece, and Wayne Selden Jr. added 15, as Kansas (21-4, 10-2) shot 47 percent from the floor (including 6-of-18 from three-point range) and held a once-red-hot Baylor squad to 38 percent for the game, 8-of-23 from downtown.

“This is the Big 12,” Drew said. “You don’t lose opportunities, you gotta take ’em…. They’ve got three (shooters) who’ve been doing real well, so it’s tough to guard everybody.”