No. 9 Baylor opened the second half with a 26-3 flurry that buried visiting Stanford on Saturday afternoon as the Bears breezed to an 86-48 nonconference victory in Waco, Texas.
LJ Cryer had a game-high 21 points and Kendall Brown added 15 for Baylor (4-0), which has enjoyed a 34.8-point average margin of victory in its four games this season.
Spencer Jones and Jaiden Delaire had 10 points apiece to pace Stanford (3-2), which was facing a Top 10 team for the first time since losing 72-56 at home to fifth-ranked Kansas in December 2019.
After a tightly contested first half in which neither team led by more than seven points, Stanford was down just 34-29 in the first minute of the second period before Baylor exploded.
Jeremy Sochan contributed a jumper and a dunk to an 11-0 burst that gave the Bears a 45-29 advantage and put them in command for good.
But the runaway wasn’t over. After Delaire made two free throws for Stanford, the Bears ran off the next 15 points, with Jonathan Tchamwa Tchatchoua highlighting the shellacking with a pair of dunks.
By the time Jones made the Cardinal’s first field goal of the half at the 9:39 mark, they had fallen behind 60-33.
James Akinjo chipped in with a game-high 11 assists and game-high four steals to complete a double-double with 11 points, while Sochan also finished with 11 points for the Bears, who shot 55.0 percent from the field and made 10 of their 26 3-point attempts.
Cryer shot 5-for-9 on threes to account for a majority of his point total.
Baylor also had a similarly easy 86-52 win over Washington last November in its only game against Pac-12 competition last season. The Bears open the Battle 4 Atlantis tournament next week against Arizona State of the Pac-12.
Harrison Ingram grabbed a game-high nine rebounds to go with four points for Stanford, which was held to 40.0-percent shooting overall and 4-for-13 from long distance.
–Field Level Media
