Baylor football was unable to hang on in a close game through the first three quarters as TCU punched its ticket to the Big 12 title game.
As the game started to get out of hand on Friday afternoon, tempers flared. Baylor football was unable to keep up with the nation’s No. 12 team as the TCU Horned Frogs pulled away in the second half.
The Bears finish the season 1-11 while TCU heads to the Big 12 Championship for a rematch with Oklahoma next week. Still, the Bears showed some fight — both figuratively and literally — through the first three quarters, but they just didn’t have enough firepower to keep up with the Horned Frogs.
What did we learn from the Bears’ 45-22 Week 13 loss to the Horned Frogs?
3. Baylor was resilient
All year long, the Bears had the opportunity to just give up and look ahead to next season. However, that’s not what Matt Rhule preaches to his players. Baylor was over-matched in almost every game thanks to the attrition in the offseason and the youthful roster.
It would have been fairly easy to give up when losing to the Horned Frogs in the first quarter, but they continued to fight and kept things interesting through most of the next two quarters. They fell behind 35-22 after the third and TCU’s defense held on in the fourth quarter to blank the Bears, but it was a resilient effort for a young 1-10 team on the road.
As crazy as that might sound, it does come off as a building block for the program moving forward. The Bears weren’t out of any game completely this season with the exception of Oklahoma State and Texas and the resilience was impressive, even with nothing on the line.