By winning 63-53 Saturday at West Virginia, Baylor snapped a four-game losing streak.
Now comes the hard part for the Bears – winning at home.
Entering Wednesday night’s Big 12 matchup in Waco, Texas against Colorado, Baylor (12-9, 2-7 Big 12) is 0-4 in league play at Foster Pavilion. Three of those came against top-15 teams in Iowa State, Houston and Texas Tech, while the other occurred on Jan. 24 to TCU, 97-90.
“Our Big 12 schedule at home hasn’t been easy,” said Bears coach Scott Drew. “We’re not a top-10, top-15 team. At the end of the day, we’d like to get there but we’re not there.”
Baylor took serious steps in the right direction at West Virginia, particularly on defense. It limited the Mountaineers to 36% shooting from the field, including 5-of-19 from the 3-point line, and snapped their 16-game home winning streak.
Cameron Carr led the Bears with 16 points and 12 rebounds, more than offsetting his seven turnovers.
“As a coach, you want guys playing as hard as they can and leaving it all out there,” Drew said of Carr. “And he did that today.”
Carr paces Baylor with 19.4 points per game, while freshman Tounde Yessoufou scores 17.3.
Meanwhile, Colorado (13-9, 3-6) is coming off perhaps its best win of the season, an 87-61 rout of TCU on Sunday in Boulder. Sebastian Rancik came off the bench to score 17 points and lead five Buffaloes in double figures.
Colorado connected on 35 of 63 attempts from the field, including 11 of 23 3-pointers, and collected 24 assists. It was the result coach Tad Boyle desired after changing three-fifths of his starting lineup in an attempt to stop a six-game losing streak.
“We hadn’t seen that Colorado team in November, December or January but we finally saw it on February 1,” Boyle said. “I told our team better late than never on that. It just shows how good this team can be.”
Isaiah Johnson leads Colorado in scoring at 16.5 ppg.
