Baylor prevails, Gonzaga comes up short of making history
The NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament returned in 2021 after taking a hiatus last season due to COVID-19.
Baylor was crowned champion on April 5 after it routed top-ranked Gonzaga 86-70 in Indianapolis, with the loss costing the Bulldogs their chance at making history by going undefeated and joining San Francisco (1955-56), North Carolina (1956-57), UCLA (which accomplished the feat four times under legendary coach John Wooden) and Bob Knight’s 1975-76 Indiana Hoosiers as the only teams to have done so.
The game pitted the No. 1 and No. 2 teams in the preseason polls, and it was the game that every basketball fan wanted to see. The two teams actually had been scheduled to play in the regular season, but the game between the then-unbeatens was canceled just before tipoff because of COVID concerns. The Bears might have entered the Final Four with an unblemished mark, as well, had they not had to endure a COVID-related conference in the midst of their Big 12 campaign. As it were, Baylor dropped only a regular-season decision to Kansas before falling to Oklahoma State in the Big 12 Tournament semifinals, but it still managed to get a No. 1 seed in the Big Dance.
Baylor knocked off Hartford, Wisconsin, Villanova, Arkansas and Houston en route to its title game showdown with the Bulldogs, who entered the matchup at 31-0.
Gonzaga was scarcely tested all season, with the exception of scraps against West Virginia, BYU (in the West Coast Conference Championship game) and UCLA in the national semifinals. The Zags did face a few deficits, though they were largely due to being uninterested for large stretches of games before managing to flip the switch in time to win them.
And while the Bulldogs play in the West Coast, a mid-major conference, their non-conference schedule included games against defending champion Virginia, Iowa and the aforementioned Jayhawks and Mountaineers, all of whom also made it to the 2021 tournament.
Gonzaga had been dominant all season, and most fans thought the path had been cleared for the Bulldogs to cut down the nets after Illinois went down in the second round against Loyola-Chicago, two tournament removed from a Cinderella run to the Final Four in 2018, beating Tennessee along the way. But the Zags looked obviously worn down by their 93-90 overtime victory over UCLA in the semifinals, which came courtesy of a buzzer-beating 3-point jumper by freshman Jalen Suggs.
Suggs managed to score 22 points against the Bears in the final despite picking up two early fouls. Drew Timme and Corey Rispert scored 12 points each, but their efforts weren’t enough as the Bears, in their first Final Four since 1950, clinched their first title since 1948 by blitzing the Bulldogs early and often.
Baylor, which led by as many as 19 points in the first half, kept bringing the heat all night, forcing the Bulldogs into 14 turnovers. Despite looking exhausted and sometimes downright flat, the Bulldogs managed to engineer a late first-half run to pull within 47-37 by halftime. But Baylor used a balanced attack to put the Bulldogs away, and, really, Gonzaga never really recovered after the Bears (28-2) hit their first five shots from long range.
Jared Butler scored a game-high 22 points. MaCio Teague added 19. Davion Mitchell had 15, and Adam Flagler finished with 13 for the Bears, coached by Scott Drew, who took over a program in shambles after a murder within the program when Patrick Dennehy was shot to death in 2003 by teammate Carlton Dotson.
The murder set off a chain of events leading to multiple infractions in the program, which was investigated and punished by the NCAA. Then-head coach Dave Bliss attempted to cover up the murder and was subsequently dismissed, with Drew taking over the program before the 2003-04 season, his reformation project with the Bears culminating in a tournament title in 2021.
The tournament’s return this year helped fans return to a sense of normalcy, and the fact that the top two overall seeds wound up playing for the championship wasn’t the only big storyline. Others included UCLA’s improbable run from the First Four to the Final Four; Oral Roberts nabbing wins over Ohio State and Florida; and the Ramblers, with Sister Jean watching from the stands, making another Cinderella run.
Elsewhere, Oregon State only made the 68-team field because it won the Pac-12 Tournament, but the Beavers made it to the Elite Eight with wins over the Volunteers, Oklahoma State and Loyola-Chicago. And North Texas got its first-ever tournament win when the Mean Green knocked out Purdue in the first round. All of this unpredictability and all of these great underdog stories are why we watch as fans and why the event is dubbed March Madness.
