Blown out at Baylor, Preparing for #7 Texas

Last Saturday in Waco was one of those games that you watch while it's being played, and as a Cowboys fan you find yourself saying "This is not going to turn out well" far too early in the game.  Although the Pokes kept it close for the first 18 minutes, Baylor closed on an 8-2 run to push their lead to 9 points going into the break.  Marshall Moses and JP Olukemi both played minimal minutes due to foul trouble, and that trend only continued in the second half.

The Pokes tried to make a run a couple of times in the second half, but the lead continued to hover around 9 points until the final 10 minutes of the game, when Baylor broke it open and ended up blowing OSU out 76-57.  Marshall Moses played a total of 11 out of a possible 40 minutes in the game.  JP Olukemi played 18 minutes.  I said before that Baylor was extremely talented, and when your two best players' minutes when added together don't equal an entire game, that's a recipe for a loss, no matter who the opponent is. Other stats that are hard to look at, but tell the tale of the game:

OSU shot 39% from the floor (Baylor shot 60%), and 21% from behind the arc (Baylor 57%).  Oklahoma State is shooting 27% from 3-point land in the month of January, one of the worst marks in all college basketball.
All 6 post players recorded AT LEAST 4 personal fouls, Olukemi was the only one with 5; not one Baylor post player recorded 4 fouls.
Oklahoma State scored fewer points against Baylor than Texas Tech, Oklahoma, and Iowa State did against the Bears.

Again, some days the bear gets you, and Saturday in Waco, the Bears got the Pokes.  No choice but to move on to an even bigger game this Wednesday night in GIA against the suddenly surging and extremely dangerous Texas Longhorns.

Texas followed up an impressive win against Texas A&M in Austin by traveling to Lawrence, Kansas and beating the #2 Jayhawks, snapping KU's 69-game home winning streak.  Has Texas caught lightning in a bottle? Will this team mirror last year's squad who rose to #1 and were 17-0 but finished horribly and were bounced in the first round of the Tournament?  So far, all signs point to success in Austin.  Tristan Thompson, J'Covan Brown, and Jordan Hamilton have this Horns' squad playing dynamite basketball right now.  OSU has struggled guarding the slashing/penetrating small forwards/shooting guards so far this year (A&M's Khris Middleton, Iowa State's Diante Garrett, Baylor's LaceDarius Dunn) and each of those three in burnt orange are capable of dropping 25. 

ESPN will be in the house, the nation will be watching, and I hope CTF gets the boys ready to play.  Oh, and Oklahoma State's last home loss?  To Texas, last February...

GO POKES!!