The No. 6 Houston Cougars handled their business at home, as they do most of the time in Big 12 play, as they beat the Baylor Bears, 76-65, on Monday night.
If you missed the game, well, we’ll explain why it might have been harder to find on your dial than you expected (thanks, ESPN).
No. 6 Houston Cougars (20-4, 12-1) remained in a first-place tie in the Big 12 and, if Arizona comes away with a win over Kansas State on Tuesday, well, that game in Tucson on Saturday has the potential to be epic.
Baylor Bears (15-9, 7-6) lost its first full game without forward Josh Ojianwuna, who is out of the season with a knee injury. The Bears now try to sort through how to move on without one of their primary rebounders.
Here are three thoughts on the game.
HOUSTON IS INEVITABLE
There is almost a Thanos-like quality to how Houston is dismantling teams right now — which makes Texas Tech going into the Fertitta Center a couple of weekends ago and winning in overtime so impressive.
Sure, it was close early, and Baylor was only down eight points at the break. But, by the under-8 timeout of the second half the Cougars were up 65-46 and the game was basically done.
Houston got healthier, too. Forward Ja’Vier Francis returned from concussion protocol. The Cougars loved having the energy back from Francis.
This was also a rare game where forward J’Wan Roberts didn’t start, as Houston countered the four-guard starting lineup Baylor used. When you have the guards the Cougars have, you can counter it well.
Houston shot great, better than 50% most of the game. The Cougars forced 15 Bears turnovers and scored 28 points off those mistakes. That was the clear difference in the game.
Of course, Houston is still ranked and in doing so ran its streak of weeks in the AP Top 25 to triple digits.
WITHOUT JOSH
Baylor has a cottage industry on its roster — glue guys. The past several years the Bears have had some of the best in the league, including Mark Vital and Jonathan Tchamwa Tchatchoua.
Josh Ojianwuna emerged as that type of player last season, and he’s only gotten better this year. That what makes his season-ending injury so tough. He gave the Bears the “dirty work” plays that both Vital and Tchamwa Tchatchoua did. Plus, Ojianwuna’s offensive skills were really coming along.
So, I was curious who might assume that mantle of being the glue guy?
One player head coach Scott Drew mentioned leading up to the game was Jason Asemota. Entering the game, he was averaging 7.2 minutes, 1.6 points and 1.8 rebounds per game. With Ojianwuna taking nearly 25 minutes per game, that’s a big gap to bridge for one player.
Well, Asemota didn’t play. Instead, Drew went with a four-guard starting lineup with Norchad Omier at forward. Baylor has won with four guards before. That’s also not a bad play against Houston and it forced the Cougars to counter with their four guards and take some size off the floor.
Honestly? Baylor shot great. The Bears were nearly 60% from the floor and better than 50% from the 3-point line. Usually, you win games like that. The problems were two-fold. Houston shot great, too, as noted. But it was also the turnovers and points off turnovers.
Meanwhile, Houston had just seven turnovers, and 30 minutes into the game the Cougars had just two turnovers. You don’t see that level of quality ball possession often.
ESPN TICKS OFF BIG 12 NATION AGAIN
A few hours before Monday’s game ESPN announced that they were shuffling the game from ESPN to … ESPNU, at least once the Los Angeles Lakers face the Utah Jazz, which featured the debut of Luka Doncic with the Lakers.
Per ESPN PR, the game would shift to the U around 9:30 p.m. central. That’s not exactly what happened.
What ACTUALLY happened was that ESPN showed the game on both ESPN and ESPNU starting at 8 p.m. central, an oddly bizarre simulcast that I’m not certain I’ve ever seen the family of networks do with a college game of this nature.
I wrote about this a couple of weeks ago in Postscripts, when it was about the SEC and the ACC getting priority over the Big 12. Well guess what? The NBA gets priority over the SEC, the ACC and the Big 12.
But the larger issue is an American Athletic Conference game, Charlotte at FAU, getting priority on ESPN2 over Baylor-Houston. Both games were at the same time, but the Big 12 game ended up being the game shifted to an ESPN channel that not everyone gets.
This was shoddy programming on ESPN’s part. Big Monday has always been for college basketball and the network upended that for a half-hour of the Lakers on ESPN, when it easily could have started the Lakers on ESPNU for a half-hour and then shifted to ESPN.
But, it’s ESPN and the Big 12, so what else is new?
You can find Matthew Postins on Twitter @PostinsPostcard.
