Baylor vs. Kansas State: Score and Reaction from 2017 Regular Season

No. 1 Baylor got back to winning ways Saturday afternoon with a 77-68 victory over No. 25 Kansas State at Bramlage Coliseum.

Baylor, which improved to 16-1, was coming off its first loss of the season, which came against No. 10 West Virginia on Tuesday—just days after the Bears were voted into the top spot in the Associated Press Top 25 for the first time in program history.

Saturday was the first time Baylor has ever won as a No. 1-ranked program.

Manu Lecomte led the Bears with a career-high 26 points alongside Ishmail Wainright and Al Freeman, who added 15 points apiece.

The three combined for 56 of Baylor's 77 points.

Baylor used the three ball to get going early, hitting three of its first five attempts from long range to spark a 10-0 run, but the team's inability to take care of the ball allowed Kansas State to stay in the game.

The Wildcats took advantage of Baylor's eight first-half turnovers to go into the locker room at halftime down just 31-30.

More promising was that Kansas State held Baylor's leading scorer, Johnathan Motley, to just five points during the opening 20 minutes.

The second half remained a closely contested affair that rarely wandered from a one-possession game during the first 10 minutes.

While Motley ran into foul trouble and continued to struggle from the field, Baylor was forced to rely on Lecomte, Wainright and Freeman to combat Kansas State's balanced scoring attack.

D.J. Johnson led the Wildcats with 20 points, while Barry Brown added 13. Xavier Sneed also chipped in with 12 off the bench, including some high flying near the rim via K-State Basketball:

But with nine minutes left, Baylor erased a two-point deficit with an 11-2 run to take a seven-point lead.

The Bears' effort to hold on to the lead got tougher when Motley fouled out with 4:34 remaining. While he finished the night with just seven points, he added nine rebounds and three assists.

Yet Baylor's Big Three did more than enough to secure the win down the stretch, as Kansas State could not find a way to stop the Bears.

Wainwright put the exclamation point on the afternoon with this put-back dunk, via Campus Insiders:

It's not often that a No. 1 team goes into Manhattan, Kansas, and comes out victorious. In fact, the last time Kansas State had lost a home game to a No. 1-ranked team was in 1997, according to the ESPN telecast.

After starting the season at 12-1, the Wildcats have lost three of their last four games, which could damage their chances of staying in the Top 25.

For Baylor, the win got the team back on track in conference play, as it was able to keep pace with Kansas, which at 4-0 is a game ahead of the Bears in the Big 12 standings.

Postgame Reaction

Baylor head coach Scott Drew was wary of his team's one loss, as he feared it could have snowballed into something much worse. So Saturday's win put his mind at ease a bit, via Chris Lilly of WIBW:

The same kinds of feelings couldn't be shared by Kansas State head coach Bruce Weber, via Lilly:

For Kansas State, an upcoming matchup against Oklahoma State on Wednesday will become as close to a must-win as possible in January.

Already three games back in the Big 12, the Wildcats have West Virginia waiting for them after Oklahoma State.