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    WACO, Texas _ The University of Central Arkansas Bears have faced the Baylor Bears three times before, but never as the defending NCAA national championships.

    That will happen at 7 p.m. Wednesday when the UCA Bears take on the ninth-ranked Baylor Bears at the Ferrell Center.

    "We're very excited to play the national champions,' said UCA head coach Anthony Boone. "You don't get to do that very often.'

    Baylor (2-0) is coming off an 80-60 win over the Nicholls Colonels in a matinee game on Monday. The Bears had a whopping 33 assists on 37 maes baskets, including 10 from 6-foot-8 freshman guard/forward Kendall Brown.

    UCA (0-2) is coming off an 85-53 loss at Butler on Friday night in Indianapolis, just three nights and two long trips after their season-opening loss at Saint Louis on Tuesday.    

    "We'll get a little bit more rest in between games this time,' said Boone. "That was tough, but we don't have excuses. I told the guys, you're tired but we have to learn to fight through that. We got home at 4 in the morning on Wednesday (from Saint Louis), and then had to get up and leave campus at 5 the next morning to fly to Butler.

    "So the guys were tired, but they fought through. I thought the first half, if we weren't as tired as we were going into this trip, we would have probably played that way for 23 24, 25 minutes instead of just the 20. The guys did improve on that and I'm very happy about that.'

    UCA trailed just 38-30 at halftime at Butler, but the Bulldogs then pulled away in the second half, shooting 58 percent from the field and limiting the Bears to just 23 second-half points. Freshman guard Camren Hunter (Bryant, Ark.) led the Bears with 14 points, while junior Eddy Kayouloud added 10 points off the bench. Hunter made 4 of 8 from three-point range.

    Butler, the NCAA runnerup in 2010 and 2011, was 21 of 30 at the free-throw line while UCA was just 4 of 6.

    Baylor finished the 2020-21 season with an 11-0 record at home (28-2 overall) at the Ferrell Center, and did not lose a game until Feb. 27 on the road against the Kansas Jayhawks.  In the NCAA Tournament, they beat Hartford, Wisconsin, Villanova, Arkansas, Houston and Gonzaga by an average score of 77-61.  Baylor ran away from No. 1 Gonzaga 86-70 in the championship game.
    
  "We've played Baylor the past two years and we thought they were the best team in the nation both times' said Boone. "We felt last year that they could have been defending national champions also if they had played the (2019 NCAA) tournament. We knew they were the best team in the country then.'

     UCA finally returns home to the Farris Center on Saturday afternoon, hosting Oral Roberts at 3:15 p.m. on the brand new "Scottie Pippen Court." ORU lost to Arkansas in the Sweet 16 last season.