THE PERFECT SPOILERS
BAYLOR WINS FIRST TITLE IN SCHOOL HISTORY, ENDS ZAGS’ UNBEATEN SEASON
Monday night may have featured an all-time team.
It just wasn’t Gonzaga. Baylor looked like the group chasing immortality and the team with all the projected first-round draft picks.
Its three-guard lineup of MaCio Teague, Jared Butler and Davion Mitchell was dynamite. Its defense was stifling. The Zags had very few answers less than 48 hours after their dramatic buzzerbeating national semifinal win over UCLA.
The result was never in doubt. Baylor scored the game’s first nine points and led by double figures almost the entire evening to win its first national championship in school history, 86-70, at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis.
“Our guys, the better the opponent, the better they play,” Baylor coach Scott Drew said. “And they love being the first — first to win [a] conference [title] since 1950, first to win a national championship. I mean, that really motivates them.”
Gonzaga (31-1), hoping to make history with a perfect season, came up well short, dropping its second national championship game in four tournaments. Bob Knight’s 1975-76 Indiana Hoosiers remained the last undefeated team in the sport’s history.
“You kind of forget. You really do forget what it’s like to lose,” Zags senior Corey Kispert said. “And every time it happens, it doesn’t feel good.”
Baylor (28-2), in the title game for the first time in 73 years, won its first crown after leading wire to wire. It was the better team on the perimeter and in the paint. It was the far better defensive team.
And now it is the national champion, completing a steady rise that began in 2003 when Drew took over a program that was only relevant at the time because of a scandal that included a player’s murder at the hands of a teammate.
Drew’s three guards were a menace. Mitchell, the Naismith Defensive Player of the Year, created havoc at both ends of the floor with his quick hands and shifty feet, notching 13 points, six rebounds and five assists. Butler, by far the best Associated Press AllAmerican on the floor — Kispert was the other — scored a teamhigh 22 points and added seven assists en route to Most Outstanding Player honors. Teague chipped in 19.
“We say it all the time: We think we’re the best guards in the nation,” Butler said. “I think we proved that tonight. We made a statement — the best way to do it, on national TV, NCAA Tournament, championship game.”
After starting 18-0, a three-week COVID-19 pause led to a poor regular-season finish for Baylor, two losses in six games. But it found its defense in this tournament, limiting its six opponents to 29.4 percent 3-point shooting and forcing 15.6 turnovers per game. Gonzaga was right around those marks on Monday, shooting 5 of 17 from deep and committing 14 turnovers.
“We haven’t played like that this year,” Gonzaga coach Mark Few said. “They literally busted us out of anything we could possibly do on offense.”
It was a bloodbath on the glass, 38-22, in favor of Baylor. Vital had nearly double the amount of offensive rebounds (eight) than Gonzaga had as a team (five).
The game’s opening possession foretold most of the contest. Vital got two offensive rebounds and Mitchell sank an open jump shot. Baylor started like it was shot out of a cannon, getting to all the 50/50 balls, whizzing past Gonzaga defenders and creating deflections and turnovers.
The Bears ran out to a 9-0 lead.
They hit their first five 3-pointers, but only led by 10 at halftime.
Jalen Suggs (22 points), Gonzaga’s projected topthree, one-and-done draft pick, was aggressive coming out of the locker room. Forcing his way into the paint, he scored on three straight possessions around the rim, and when Andrew Nembhard scored in the lane, the Zags were down just nine.
Their momentum, however, stalled. Kispert was blocked on a drive, leading to an Adam Flagler 3-pointer, and the lead was back to 16 with 12:52 left. Soon, it ballooned to 20, Gonzaga’s largest deficit of the season.
The rout was on. The Zags didn’t have a miracle in them. A Baylor celebration was inevitable.
“The city of Waco deserves this,” Drew shouted to Baylor fans in his on-court interview with CBS. “Hey Texas, we got a national championship.”