{"id":110743,"date":"2026-01-04T23:20:14","date_gmt":"2026-01-04T23:20:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/110743\/"},"modified":"2026-01-04T23:20:14","modified_gmt":"2026-01-04T23:20:14","slug":"baylor-mens-basketball-falls-to-tcu-69-63-in-james-nnajis-debut","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/110743\/","title":{"rendered":"Baylor men&#8217;s basketball falls to TCU 69-63 in James Nnaji&#8217;s debut"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>FORT WORTH, Texas (KXXV) \u2014 Baylor basketball begins conference play on the road against rival TCU. <\/p>\n<p>There was special attention on this game \u2014 to see James Nnaji in action. The former NBA draft pick finished with five points, four rebounds and one assist.<\/p>\n<p>Watch the full story here:<\/p>\n<p>Baylor men&#8217;s basketball falls to TCU 69-63 in James Nnaji&#8217;s debut<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;To be honest, it was a game situation and feeling if he would have played eight minutes, he&#8217;d have played eight. I thought he did a great job with playing the 16 minutes that he did,&#8221; head coach Scott Drew said.<\/p>\n<p>Baylor adding James to the roster becomes the most talked about story in college sports. For the Bears, they have abide by NCAA rules.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We&#8217;d like to get to a place where I think everybody isn&#8217;t shocked about anything because everyone knows what is what,&#8221; Drew said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m not going to point the finger at the NCAA because every time they&#8217;ve had rules, when the courts have overturned them, then there aren&#8217;t rules,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>Schollmaier Arena was stacked with fans and the home crowd let their voice be heard on what they think of Baylor&#8217;s player pickup.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t notice crowd reactions&#8230;I talked to Scott \u2014 I said you&#8217;re famous now, huh? When we talked at halftime, I said, I&#8217;m the only guy that stuck up for you. So you know, it is what it is. I mean, you know they&#8217;re committed. They&#8217;re gonna find ways over there \u2014 It&#8217;s not against the rules and you got to spend money and that&#8217;s what they did,&#8221; TCU men&#8217;s basketball head coach Jamie Dixon said.<\/p>\n<p>Baylor head coach Scott Drew was asked if he anticipated the general reaction by college basketball.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It was a little more than I thought,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;James did nothing wrong. Baylor did nothing wrong. And, I know he&#8217;s human and just making sure he doesn&#8217;t feel that. And again, if James was an NBA player today, he would be in the NBA,&#8221; Drew said.<\/p>\n<p>The Bears schedule heats up as they return home on Wednesday, January 7 \u2014 hosting No. 3 Iowa State.<\/p>\n<p>    Follow Shahji on social media!<\/p>\n<p>More stories from Shahji Adam<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FORT WORTH, Texas (KXXV) \u2014 Baylor basketball begins conference play on the road against rival TCU. There was&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":110744,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[49293,3689,49294,416,116,118,117,49119,49295,49296,154,35108],"class_list":["post-110743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fort-worth","tag-25-sports","tag-baylor-bears","tag-baylor-mens-basketball","tag-college-sports","tag-fort-worth","tag-fort-worth-headlines","tag-fort-worth-news","tag-james-nnaji","tag-kxxv-sports","tag-shahji-adam","tag-sports","tag-tcu-basketball"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=110743"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110743\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/110744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=110743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=110743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=110743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}