HOUSTON (AP) — When Baylor and LSU face off in the Texas Bowl on Tuesday, it will be the first meeting between the teams since the 1985 Liberty Bowl.
But they do have some familiarity with one another. Baylor coach Dave Aranda spent 2016-19 on the LSU staff, helping the Tigers to the 2019 national championship as defensive coordinator before leaving for Waco.
“It’s really cool,” Aranda said. “So many good memories and such great people, and such respect and appreciation for all of it. How my family was treated, just all of it.”
And he still holds an affinity for the school.
“I’m rooting for LSU — except for this game,” Aranda said.
Aranda’s Bears (8-4) enter the game on a high note with a six-game winning streak that came after they won just two of their first six games this season.
“I think there’s some momentum going,” Aranda said. “You get that momentum by winning, and that’s what we’ve been able to do. And we’ve got to be able to continue to do that, in any circumstance. I think if we do that, it puts us in a good position for next year, to be able to win some more.”
LSU (8-4) has won two in a row after a three-game skid as the Tigers head into their third bowl appearance under coach Brian Kelly.
“The game is such an interesting one in that momentum, belief, confidence, they all play a role,” Kelly said. “When teams are fairly equal — and that’s what the case is — all those things that I just mentioned play a role. You’re playing a team that believes they’re going to win. They’ve won games that they hadn’t won in a long time. They’ve gotten all that out of the way. So, that’s probably the biggest challenge.”
These teams both feature veteran quarterbacks in LSU’s Garrett Nussmeier and Baylor’s Sawyer Robertson.
Nussmeier ranks second in the Southeastern Conference and sixth in the nation with 3,739 yards passing and his 26 TD passes are second in the SEC. In 13 career starts, he has thrown at least two touchdown passes nine times and thrown for more than 300 yards eight times, including seven this season.
He’s led the Tigers to a 9-4 record as a starter.
Robertson leads the Big 12 with an 83.9 quarterback rating that ranks sixth in the nation. He started his career with the late coach Mike Leach at Mississippi State before transferring to Baylor last season.
He has thrown for a career-high 2,626 yards with 26 touchdowns and seven interceptions this season.
LSU will be without several top players Tuesday after tight end Mason Taylor, receiver Kyren Lacy and tackles Will Campbell and Emery Jones opted out as they prepare for the NFL draft.
Taylor, the son of NFL Hall of Fame Jason Taylor, had 55 receptions for a career-high 546 yards and two touchdowns as a junior before declaring for the draft earlier this month.
Lacy led the Tigers with 866 yards receiving and nine touchdowns and ends his career with 2,360 yards receiving.
Baylor receiver Josh Cameron leads the team with nine touchdown receptions this season, which ranks 11th in school history. His 44 receptions for 643 yards also lead the team and are both career highs.
The performance comes after he didn’t score a touchdown in his first two seasons.
Cameron is also the team’s punt returner, and he ranks second in the country by averaging 20.7 yards per return.
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FILE - LSU quarterback Garrett Nussmeier (13) passes in the first half of an NCAA college football game against Vanderbilt in Baton Rouge, La., Saturday, Nov. 23, 2024. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert, File)
FILE - Baylor head coach Dave Aranda watches his team warm up before an NCAA college football game against Iowa State, Saturday, Oct. 5, 2024, in Ames, Iowa. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall, File)
NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stocks are drifting lower Thursday following a jumble of mixedreports that shed little clarity on how the U.S. economy is managing through President Donald Trump’s trade war.
The S&P 500 was 0.3% lower in morning trading and potentially on track for its first drop of the week. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 139 points, or 0.3%, as of 10:30 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.8% lower.
Treasury yields sank more sharply in the bond market following the reports, with the headliners saying shoppers spent less at U.S. retailers last month than expected, while inflation was better at the wholesale level than economists expected. Other updates said U.S. manufacturing looks like it’s still contracting but fewer U.S. workers are applying for unemployment benefits than expected.
Altogether, the reports suggested the Federal Reserve may have more room to cut interest rates later this year to bolster the U.S. economy if it weakens under the weight of high tariffs. But they did little to spell out whether the economy is falling toward a recession, as many investors had been fearing, or shaking off the uncertainty after Trump called off many of his tariffs temporarily.
Such uncertainty showed itself in Walmart’s stock, which fell 3.1% even though it reported a bigger profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected.
Like other U.S. companies struggling through Trump’s on-again-off-again rollout of tariffs, Walmart did not offer a forecast for how much profit it will make in the current quarter. Chief Financial Officer John David Rainey pointed to “the range of near-term outcomes being exceedingly wide and difficult to predict,” though the company did say it expects sales to grow between 3.5% and 4.5%, not including the swings that shifting values of foreign currencies can bring.
The nation’s largest retailer also said that it must raise prices due to higher costs caused by Trump’s tariffs.
Equipment maker Deere also said it's seeing “near-term market challenges” and called the situation “dynamic,” as many other companies have. It lowered the bottom end of its forecasted range of profit for the full year. But its stock nevertheless rose 4.2% after it reported a stronger profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected.
Cisco Systems was another winner and jumped 5.8% after the tech giant also topped expectations for profit. Analysts said they're optimistic about Cisco's artificial-intelligence prospects.
Elsewhere on Wall Street, Dick’s Sporting Goods tumbled 14.9% after it said it would buy the struggling Foot Locker chain for $2.4 billion. Dick’s also said that it made a better profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected.
Foot Locker soared 83.3% after coming into the day with a loss of nearly 41% for the year so far.
It’s the second buyout of a major footwear company in as many weeks as businesses struggle with uncertainty over how Trump’s tariffs will impact imported products coming from overseas. Last week Skechers announced that it was being taken private by 3G Capital for $9 billion.
In the oil market, crude prices sank roughly 2.5% on expectations that more petroleum could be set to flow into global markets because of a possible deal between the United States and Iran on the Middle Eastern country’s nuclear program. Such a deal could help ease sanctions against Tehran.
Elsewhere, China moved to reverse some of its “non-tariff” measures against the U.S. as agreed with Washington in their temporary trade war cease-fire, while demanding that the U.S. side “immediately correct its wrong practices.”
A Chinese Commerce Ministry spokesperson accused the Trump administration of violating world trade rules by announcing that use of Ascend computer chips made by China’s Huawei Technologies violates U.S. export controls.
Stock indexes fell 0.8% in Hong Kong and 0.7% in Shanghai, while indexes were mixed elsewhere in Asia and Europe.
In the bond market, the yield on the 10-year Treasury fell to 4.49% from 4.53% late Wednesday.
The two-year Treasury yield, which more closely tracks expectations for Fed action, dropped to 3.99% from 4.05%. Traders are building bets that the Fed will resume cutting its main interest rate as soon as September.
The Fed has been keeping its main interest rate on hold this year as it waits to see how Trump’s trade policies play out for the economy. Cutting interest rates would help juice the economy by making it easier for U.S. households and companies to borrow and spend. But it would also push upward on inflation when worries are high that Trump’s tariffs will do the same thing.
Fed Chair Jerome Powell warned in a speech on Thursday that the world “may be entering a period of more frequent, and potentially more persistent, supply shocks" that could goose inflation higher and present a "difficult challenge for the economy and for central banks.”
AP Business Writers Matt Ott and Elaine Kurtenbach contributed.
Traders Jonathan Mueller, right, and Michael Capolino work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Wednesday, May 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
Trader Jonathan Corpina works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Wednesday, May 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
Trader Edward Curran works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Wednesday, May 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
Currency traders watch monitors near a screen showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) and the foreign exchange rate between U.S. dollar and South Korean won, top right, at the foreign exchange dealing room of the KEB Hana Bank headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Thursday, May 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)
Trader William Lawrence works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Wednesday, May 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
Currency traders watch monitors near a screen showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI), top left, and the foreign exchange rate between U.S. dollar and South Korean won, top center, at the foreign exchange dealing room of the KEB Hana Bank headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Thursday, May 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)
Currency traders watch monitors near a screen showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) in Seoul, South Korea, Thursday, May 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)
