Bears exit again in second round
MEMPHIS, Tenn. — A few minutes before tipoff between third-seeded Baylor and sixthseeded Clemson on Sunday night in Fedexforum, an upbeat Bears coach Scott Drew fired a wadded piece of paper into a trash can about 10 feet behind the Bears' bench. Swish.
Drew's hot hand carried over from Baylor's NCAA Tournament opener against Colgate, but the Bears' collective hot hands did not as the Tigers built a double-digit halftime lead and prevailed 72-64 in the second round.
Clemson (23-11) advances to its first Sweet 16 in six years and will face second-seeded Arizona in Los Angeles later this week. The Bears wrap up their 21st season under Drew at 24-11, as Baylor's Ja'kobe Walter missed two free throws with 36 seconds remaining and with Clemson clinging to a 66-64 lead.
“We work on free throws all the time, so missing them really hurts for sure,” said Walter, who was 5-of-11 from the free throw line but scored 20 points. “But as a team, we all just stayed together. We know what we've been through this whole season, so we didn't doubt in our minds at all we were going to come back and make it a game.”
Clemson raced to a 35-25 halftime lead thanks to making 13-of-25 field goals (52%), including
6-of-11 on 3-pointers (55%). The Bears made 16-of-30 3-pointers against Colgate, but 6-of-24 against the Tigers, including 3-of-9 in the first 20 minutes as the Tigers jumped to the double-digit lead at the break.
Clemson, which was 11-9 in Atlantic Coast Conference play this season, has played up the underdog role in the NCAA postseason, as plenty of prognosticators picked 11th-seeded New Mexico to knock off the Tigers on Friday night. Clemson whipped the Lobos by 21 points, and kept their hot hand rolling for nearly the entire 40 minutes against the Bears.
“We certainly recognize it,” 14th-year Clemson coach Brad Brownell said of the Tigers perhaps not being considered by
many as a serious early contender to advance to the Sweet 16 this season. “(But) I don't know that we have this big boulder on our shoulder that we're using as a rallying cry.”
With about eight minutes left in the game and with the Baylor players having gone cold from the field, an exasperated Drew turned to his players on the bench and reminded them to, “Catch and shoot, catch and shoot!”
The Bears sliced a 15-point second half deficit to as little as two points late, but it was too little, too late for the Bears during their third consecutive second-round exit. The Bears' 16 3pointers only a game prior against Colgate tied a program record for most 3-pointers in an NCAA Tournament game, but this time they were 6-of-24 from the 3-point line.
Drew led the team to its first national title in 2021. Baylor and UTEP (then Texas Western in 1966) are the only programs in the state to win national titles.
Despite Sunday's setback, the Bears appear to be in good shape for next season. Against Clemson they started two freshmen in guard Walter and forward Yves Missi, and five of their 13 players are freshmen.
The Tigers under Brownell will try and advance to their first Elite Eight since 1980, and Clemson has never made a Final Four.
“Like most teams we had a couple of bumps in the road, but these guys never doubted,” Brownell said. “We never quit, we just kept working. We came into this tournament pretty determined and pretty confident, and I'm just glad to see it paid off.”
Clemson in its biggest game in six years was led by guard Chase Hunter's 20 points. The Tigers shot 49% from the field (23 of 47) compared to 39% (21of-54) by the Bears.
“When we started to make a comeback, and started to get the pace and started to get a couple of stops we started moving the ball better,” Drew said. “Unfortunately in basketball, when you make shots everything seems to go better. In the first half, we didn't make enough shots, and credit (Clemson) for a lot of that.”