KANSAS CITY – The high flying ISU men’s basketball team crashed and burned at the Big 12 Conference Tournament Friday in Kemper Arena.

The top-seeded and Big 12 regular season champion Cyclones were upset 62-49 by Baylor. The Cyclones got off to a sluggish start and remained in a funk the rest of the game, committing 19 turnovers and shooting 31 percent from the field.

The Cyclones fall to 25-5 with the loss while the Bears kept their NCAA tournament hopes alive, improving to 19-10. The Bears will play the winner of Texas and Okalhoma State in tomorrow afternoon’s semifinal round.

“Give Baylor all the credit,” ISU coach Larry Eustachy said. “They came out more determined and executed far better. There was nothing new that we weren’t prepared for.”

The Bears won a first-round tournament game Thursday night while the Cyclones had a bye. The difference was evident from the start as the Bears looked more ready to play and found their flow right away.

“One of the most difficult things at a tournament is to have a bye,” Baylor coach Dave Bliss said. ” I think the opportunity we had yesterday to win a basketball game gave us a different kind of energy coming into this game.”

The Bears leading scorer Terry Black was held to just one point but senior DeMarcus Minor picked up the slack with 25 points and eight rebounds.

Minor fueled the Bears to a sizable first half lead with 17 points in the first 20 minutes. Minor swished four jumpers and then added a three-point play late in the first half to give the Bears a 29-19 halftime lead.

“We knew we were going to run a good offense and I just stepped up and shot the ball and it went in,” Minor said. “We just really wanted to get to the next game. I’m a senior, I don’t want to stop playing.”

The Cyclones were cold from the field in the first half, scoring just four points in the first eight minutes of the game. The Cyclones turned the ball over 16 times and got into major foul trouble in the first 20 minutes as Jamaal Tinsley, Paul Shirley, Shane Power and Kantrail Horton all got whistled for three fouls.

The Bears kept the momentum in the second half, increasing the lead to 14 points in the opening minutes. The Cyclones couldn’t chip into the lead as the Bears kept coming up with one big basket after another.

With five minutes left, the Cyclones appeared to catch a sense of urgency and trimmed the lead down to eight points at 48-40 on four straight free throws by Paul Shirley. Minor countered by coming down and drilling a jumper and the Cyclones never got closer than eight points again.

Jake Sullivan and Tyray Pearson finished with 10 points each to pace the Cyclones. The four senior starters of Tinsley, Shirley, Horton and Martin Rancik combined to finish 9 of 40 from the field.

“This game reminded me a lot of the Drake game last season,” Eustachy said. “It was just a matter of the ball not going in. We didn’t make the shots.”

There was a large Cyclone following at Friday’s game and Eustachy was in an apologetic mood towards the legions of Cyclone supporters that have turned Kemper Arena into “Hilton South” in the past.

“I really do feel for the 12,000 plus people that came down here,” Eustachy said. “Money is tight, and for some people this is their vacation and that’s who I’m thinking about. We ended it short and I really, really apologize to our fans.”