It has been almost a full two weeks since Baylor saw any hopes of an upset win over top-ranked McCallie slip by the wayside on a night when all the money in the world couldn’t buy the Red Raiders a made shot.
And when the basketball rim turned unkind to Baylor Friday night in the midst of an early McCallie blitz when the two D-II AA powers got together again on the Blue Tornado home court, it would have been easy to let the latest opportunity slip away.
Except it didn’t.
The Red Raiders dialed it in to hit 10 3-pointers on the night and sent the red side home happy with a hard-fought 54-51 win over their rivals, handing McCallie its first loss after 17 straight wins to open the season.
“There is no question about it.
It would have been easy to tense up after the start. The ball just didn’t want to go down for us, and they were good shots, and I’m sure we began to feel it a little bit because of that first game, but they showed some real toughness tonight. There’s a great lesson there: shooters got to keep shooting it,” said Baylor head coach Austin Clark.
And that’s exactly what Beyuan Hendricks did. The junior Baylor guard seemed to provide a calming influence during the rocky first quarter start in which the Red Raiders missed their final seven shots as McCallie closed the quarter with an 11-0 run for a 16-8 lead.
After Hendricks scored all eight of Baylor’s first quarter points, he opened the second quarter with two straight 3s to account for the Red Raiders first 14 points of the game to cut it to 18-14, and his teammates seemed to feed off of his confidence.
“This is just such a big game for us, and we had to be confident in our shots to have a chance. We’ve been shooting these shots our whole lives, so there isn’t any reason not to be confident. This was a big one tonight,” said Hendricks who finished with 22 points, including five treys.
Tre Jackson scored the first non-Hendricks generated point with a 3-pointer and then teammate Patrick Urey hit two more bombs as Baylor held McCallie to five points in the quarter and closed with a 14-1 run to make it 25-21 at the half, a lead the Blue Tornado could never overcome.
“We kept thinking they can’t continue to shoot like that, and it made for a tough time. They did a really good job the first game defensively on us, but they couldn’t make the shots. Well, they found it tonight,” said McCallie coach John Shulman.
Despite the disappointment of losing to their rival, all was not lost on Shulman as the big blue scrapped their way back from a 10-point fourth quarter deficit to get as close as 46-45.
“We battled and made it a one possession game. We are a good team and they’re a good team. This is really our first bit of adversity. Sometimes winning a game like, you don’t remember all the bad things you did because of the win. I think everyone will listen a little better going forward,” Shulman added.
Indeed. McCallie has played only one game where the opponent played them within single digits and that was nine-point win at that, so if nothing else, the tightness of the final period was definitely a new experience for this group.
For a while, though, it didn’t look as if there would be any such tightness as Baylor took firm control with an 8-0 run in the final minute of the third period to make it 40-30. Jackson and Hendricks both nailed treys and Jackson’s steal and feed to Lorenzo White for a layup
provided the spurt.
McCallie (17-1, 1-1) went to its full-court press in the final period and it resulted in three turnovers to generate more offense in a five-minute stretch than the previous two quarters had yielded the Blue Tornado. After scoring just 14 points in the middle two periods, McCallie scored 15 points to close that deficit to 46-45 with 2:02 left in the game.
Baylor made eight of 12 free throws down the stretch with Hendricks and Jackson hitting big pair each in the final 1:02. Clark did a masterful job taking time off the final period clock, netting two easy layups, but a pair of missed easy ones almost cost them.
McCallie’s Junior Clay scored eight points in the final period as Baylor had no answer for his quickness to the basket. Twice, though, the Red Raiders jumped him up top with two defenders and forced him to give it up and both possessions resulted in missed shots when the going was crucial.
“We wanted it out of his hands for sure, but this game wasn’t won by coaching. It was won by the kids in the game. Every single one of them took it up a notch when it needed to be taken up. This game just means so much on both sides, it’s a war. I just couldn’t be more pleased with them,” said Clark.
The Red Raiders (9-4, 2-1) got double figures from Urey (13) and Jackson (10) to go along with Hendricks’ 22 points and seven rebounds. Niko Simpkins also did a whale of job inside battling McCallie’s Jorden Starling finally getting the 6-5 McCallie senior to foul out of the game with 1:34 left. Simpkins had six boards and big block in the final period.
Freshman Randy Brady also had a huge blocked shot in the final minute.
McCallie was led by the fleet-footed Clay, who was the only Blue Tornado in double digits with 14 points and added eight rebounds, including five offensive ones.
Starling had nine rebounds as McCallie did win the board battle 29-22, but hit just 15 of 50 shots for a 30 percent clip. Baylor was just a bit better at 39 percent (16 of 41) but 10 of those makes were behind the arc while McCallie was just 2-of-12 on 3s.
“After 17 wins, this one will do us some good too. Basketball isn’t like football. We’’ play 30 games this year and there will be peaks and valleys. We will learn from it, and get ready in a hurry. You have to in this region,” Shulman added.
McCallie will host No.2 MBA on Tuesday while Baylor travels to Brentwood Academy next Friday.
Baylor 8 17 15 14 -- 54
McCallie 16 5 9 21 -- 51
BAYLOR (54) – Jackson 10, Hendricks 22, Ristonavic, White 2, Brady 6, Urey 13, Pippenger, Simpkins 2.
McCALLIE (51) – Starling 6, Walker 2, Clay 14, Butler 7, Gibson 7, Hunt, Shulman 3, Watkins, Hardy 7, Dickey 3.
3-point goals: Baylor 10 (Hendricks 5, Urey 3, Jackson 2), McCallie 2 (Shulman, Hardy)
(Contact James Beach via email at 1134james@gmail.com or Twitter @beachnut1134)