KANSAS CITY, Mo.-Talen Horton-Tucker hit five 3-pointers and scored 21 points as Iowa State beat Baylor, 83-66, on Thursday in the quarterfinals of the Big 12 Tournament.
The Cyclones (21-11) also had key contributions from Marial Shayok who had 18 with four 3-pointers, Lindell Wigginton with 16 points and Tyrese Haliburton with 13.
Iowa State faces top-seeded Kansas State in the semifinals tonight.
"Just being a freshman and my teammates having confidence to keep giving me the ball says a lot," Horton-Tucker said. "I just felt good today and knocked down some shots."
Mario Kegler led Baylor (19-13) in scoring with 16 while Makai Mason had 14.
Iowa State made 13 three's and shot over 50 percent from the field in their first win since Feb. 25. The Bears made nine shots from distance and shot just 43 percent.
Both teams came out hot but Mason hit three of his four 3-pointers, the last one part of a 10-1 run that gave the Bears and 18-14 lead. Iowa State finished the first half on a 12-3 run to lead 38-29 as Horton-Tucker finished with four first half triples and 16 points.
"You really have to credit Iowa State," Baylor coach Scott Drew said. "It seems like with Tucker if he's on he's on and if not he's not. He was on today and I thought that's what cost us."
Haliburton started the second half nailing two 3's and making a layup to give the Cyclones a 16-point edge before a Baylor timeout. The Cyclones led by as many as 22.
No. 15 Kansas State 70, TCU 61
KANSAS CITY, Mo.-Kamau Stokes had just been hammered by TCU on the way to the basket, and Kansas State's senior guard was still lying face-down on the floor when a scratchy voice rang out inside Sprint Center.
"Make your free throws!" Wildcats coach Bruce Weber yelled.
So much for sympathy.
Stokes made the first and clanked the second, but the Wildcats secured the rebound and Stokes buried a 3-pointer to atone for the miss. The four-point play allowed Kansas State to edge ahead, and the regular-season champs never trailed down the stretch in a 70-61 victory over the Horned Frogs in the quarterfinals of the Big 12 Tournament.
"Coach Weber always talks about toughness and I'm pretty sure he wanted me to get up," said Stokes, who finished with 11 points. "Just had to let the pain wear off a bit."
He'll have 24 hours to rest before a semifinal date with No. 5 seed Iowa State.
Xavier Sneed led all scorers with 19 points, none bigger than a 3-pointer as the shot clock sounded in the final minute. Barry Brown added 12 points and Makol Mawien had 10 for the Wildcats (25-7), who played without All-Big 12 forward Dean Wade in their first game as a No. 1-seed since 1977.
Wade watched the game from the sideline with a boot on his right foot, and probably had a hard time not leaping from his seat when Kansas State seized control in the second half.
"Just proud of our guys continuing to be resilient and fight," Weber said.
Desmond Bane had 16 points to lead the eighth-seeded Horned Frogs (20-13), who split with the Wildcats in the regular season. Alex Robinson added 12 points and Kevin Samuel had 11.
Now, coach Jamie Dixon's team must wait for Sunday to find out whether it has done enough to qualify for the NCAA Tournament. The Horned Frogs held on to beat Oklahoma State in the tournament's opening round, but they went just 7-11 against the league during the regular season.
"I feel like we definitely did enough," Bane said. "We got 20 wins in the best league in the country. That's really hard to do. Seven of our 11 losses came to the top teams in the country, the others on the road. I feel like we have no bad losses."
TCU was in the flow right from the tip, perhaps having benefited from that down-to-the-wire win over the Cowboys. The Horned Frogs were hot from the 3-point arc and solid on defense, and soon they'd built a double-digit lead on the regular-season conference champs.
They also took a crowd tinted Kansas State purple right out of the game.
"We didn't have the right energy, the right mindset," Brown said. "I though the first 10 or 12 minutes we just coasted. I tried to express it to our guys that it wasn't going to be easy."
The Wildcats finally clawed back into the game, getting a big lift from Cartier Diarra, their backup guard who returned after missing several weeks with a hand injury. He slammed an alley-oop dunk to ignite the crowd, and Sneed's buzzer-beating 3 got the Wildcats within 34-32 at the break.
They used a 15-2 run to take their first lead midway through the second half.
The Wildcats' lead eventually reached 10 before TCU mounted a comeback of its own. But after Mebane's basket made it 55-52 with 5 1/2 minutes to go, Snead buried his third 3-pointer while getting fouled. He converted the free throw and gave Kansas State some breathing room again.
The Horned Frogs were never able to catch all the way up.
"They just seemed to get more physical, more aggressive on our drives, our penetration," Dixon said. "They were keeping us from getting a direct line to the basket, and they hit a couple of shots."
W. Virginia 79, No. 7 Texas Tech 74
KANSAS CITY, Mo.-Emmitt Mathews scored a career-high 28 points as 10th-seeded West Virginia upset No. 7 Texas Tech 79-74 in the quarterfinals of the Big 12 Tournament on Thursday night.
West Virginia (14-19) advances to the semifinals, against either No. 17 Kansas or Texas, on Friday night.
Jarrett Culver scored 26 points, Tariq Owens had 14, and Matt Mooney had 12 for Texas Tech (26-6).
Matthews hit a corner 3 to give West Virginia a 16-point lead with nine minutes to go, but Texas Tech scored 16 of the next 18 to get within four.
The Red Raiders took a 69-68 lead on a basket by Culver, their first lead since it was 7-5. But the Mountaineers scored seven of the next nine to regain the lead, 75-71.
Culver missed a 3 with 20 seconds left and Tech trailing 77-74, and Matthews sealed the victory with two free throws.
The Red Raiders, one of the hottest teams in the country entering the game, were outrebounded 44-30.
The Mountaineers went on an 11-2 run early and led by 10 just eight minutes into the game.
The Red Raiders, co-regular season champs, trailed 28-11 in the first half before switching to a zone defense and thwarting the Mountaineer offense as they began to mount a rally.