By Wendell Barnhouse
Big12Sports.com Correspondent
WACO, Texas – When your game night promotion is a “white out” – t-shirts were distributed with the phrase #AllWhiteEverything – it’s appropriate for the team to follow through with a white-hot performance.
A speedy start and a clutch close lifted No. 22 Baylor to a 74-73 victory over 11th-ranked Iowa State Wednesday night. Senior point guard Kenny Chery, who splashed a 3-pointer to spark the Bears’ game-opening 16-1 run, pulled up off the dribble for the game-winning 15-foot jumper with 4.7 seconds remaining.
“I was taking the last shot and I thought I’d try to get to the rim,” said Chery, who finished with 13 points on 4-of-16 shooting. When Iowa State’s Monte’ Morris stumbled trying to guard Chery, the opening was there to stop and pop.
The Cyclones (12-3, 2-1) had a chance to stay perfect in Big 12 play heading into Saturday night’s prime-time showdown with Kansas.
“We’ve got to get past (this loss),” said Iowa State’s Naz Long, who scored a game-high 19 and made all five of his 3-point attempts. “We’ve got the No. 1 team in the Big 12 coming to our place. We weren’t looking past anything. … It’s a very quiet in the locker room. We could have been 3-0 with two wins on the road. This one hurts, man."
The Bears made six of their first nine shots, including four 3-pointers, to blitz to a 16-1 lead. Iowa State, though, responded with a 21-6 run that made it 34-32 with 6:03 remaining in the first half. The Cyclones squandered that rally as Baylor responded with a 14-2 spurt to halftime that gave the home team a 46-34 lead.
“We got beat out of the locker room tonight at the start of the game and the start of the second half,” Iowa State coach Fred Hoiberg said. “The start of the game is going to stick with me. Especially on the road, you have to get off to better starts.”
The Bears (13-3, 2-2) had their best first-half point total of the season and made eight 3-pointers to get there. In the second half, Baylor relied on their edge in size and strength to control the paint. Rico Gathers finished with 14 points and 15 rebounds – his eighth double-double this season while freshman Jonathan Motley scored 14 points with six of his seven rebounds coming on the offensive glass.
"Gathers is a monster and Motley has great length," Hoiberg said.
It took eight minutes into the second half but Baylor took its second 15-point lead as Motley scored on consecutive possessions to put the Bears up 58-43 with 12:01 to play. The Cyclones and Long started to find the range from behind the arc. They took their first lead, 68-67, with 1:54 to play.
A week prior, Baylor had the chance to beat Kansas in the Ferrell Center but failed to execute in the last 10 seconds of a one-point loss.
“That Kansas game helped us prepare for tonight,” Gathers said. “We were poised and Kenny Chery he did what he had to do as a point guard, make a play at the end.”
With the game tied at 70, Motley followed up a Chery miss to give the Cyclones a 72-70 edge with 26 seconds remaining. Iowa State’s Bryce Dejean Jones nailed a corner three in front of his team’s bench to put the visitors ahead 73-72 with 12.1 seconds remaining.
Chery, who suffered a slight right shoulder injury with just under 10 minutes remaining, had missed 12 of his last 14 shots before his hero shot.
"For him to knock down that last shot after not being as efficient from the field as he normally is, I thought that showed a lot of poise, character, guts," Baylor coach Scott Drew said. "And I know with our team, there's no one we'd rather have with the ball in his hands at the end of the game."