Bears dominated Zags from start to finish.

Two teams from Texas in the national semifinals. A deserving champion from the Lone Star State.

That is how it should be, should have been.

With the state producing so many talented players, programs in Texas belong among the elite.

That goes for football, too. Right now, we’re talking basketball.

Baylor’s rout of Gonzaga on Monday night enabled the Bears to bring home just the second national championship for a Texas school in the men’s tournament. The previous one came 55 long years ago at UTEP (then Texas Western).

“Look at how much great basketball we have from high school, AAU, junior college, college, and we haven’t won a national championship since ’66,” Baylor coach Scott Drew said. “It’s long overdue for the state.”

That drought isn’t likely to be matched.

Between 1985 and 2018, Texas (2003) was the only school from the state to advance to the Final Four.

There have been three in the past two NCAA Tournaments.

At one point this season, Houston, Baylor, Texas and Texas Tech became the first foursome from the same state to be ranked in the top 10 at the same time.

Gonzaga (9-1 odds) is listed as the favorite to win next year’s championship, with Baylor right behind at 12-1. Gambling sites list UH at 22-1 and Texas Tech 25-1, giving the state four teams in the top 20.

Drew has Baylor rolling. Kelvin Sampson has turned Houston into a yearly threat. Texas Tech was the national runner-up in 2019 and made it to the Elite Eight the year before that.

Texas expects to be a contender under new coach Chris Beard, who left Tech to usher in a new era with a new facility in Austin.

Yes, college basketball in Texas should be outstanding for the next few years.

No team will be better than this year’s Bears, though.

Baylor outscored its six opponents in the Tournament by an average of 15 points and made its first trip to the modern Final Four look easy with runaway wins over Houston and Gonzaga.

Gonzaga had the unblemished record; Baylor had the better team. More aggressive. More athletic. Better.

The precision with which the Bears executed offensively Monday night was likely going to result in a victory, but as UCLA learned in the semifinals, you can’t count on outscoring the Zags, who sported the nation’s No. 1 offense.

Baylor’s defensive pressure, a coordinated brutality, is why the game got out of hand.

Gonzaga had been accustomed to working for free shots and making them against pretty much every team it faced in running to its 31-0 record. The Zags didn’t come close to their season average of 91 points, finishing 21 shy of that with their lowest output of the year.

“You try to do everything within your power to flip the switch, but it was tough,” Gonzaga coach Mark Few said. “When they’re consistently more aggressive on both ends, it was hard to generate rhythm.”

The Bears’ strong Tournament run and their difficult road to the championship will be remembered. They were shut down, without any games, for a full three weeks in the middle of the season because of COVID-19 protocols and cancellations.

“Shoot, the beginning of the year, some guys were breaking up with girlfriends even because they wanted to make sure they didn’t get COVID,” Drew said. “Guys not going to see family, not going to see friends. I mean, they really sacrificed a lot. And I feel real blessed that they had an opportunity to play in the NCAA Tournament.”

At the news conference where Drew was announced as Baylor head coach almost 18 years ago, his enthusiasm was palpable. He believed he could do more at Baylor than had ever been done there.

Even if most of us who were there didn’t believe him, he believed.

The unprecedented situation he took over, inheriting a mess left by Dave Bliss, was going to be among the most difficult turnaround jobs in the country. He wasn’t fazed.

“I did not come here ( just) to go to the NCAA Tournament,” Drew said on that August day. “We came to win games in the NCAA Tournament. We came with a chance to win a national championship at Baylor University.”

I opened my news story that day with a quote from thenuniversity president Robert Sloan:

“It’s a great day in the history of Baylor.”

Indeed it was.

Surely, Drew believes there are more to come.

I believe him.