Baylor zigs Zags: A team for this age derails a would-be team for the ages
Just when Gonzaga was all but kneeling to be knighted as a team for the ages, the unblemished Zags ran into a team for this age.
At the end of a season of disruption, in a college basketball world where players have increasing freedom of movement, at a time when the game everywhere is becoming increasingly positionless, Baylor just happened to be built for all of that.
Just when everyone thought Gonzaga’s time had finally come, it turned out to be someone else’s time instead.
And Baylor left very little doubt about it.
The Bears’ 86-70 win Monday night represented a triumph of the novel over the known, the transitional over the traditional. With not one but two Big South freshmen of the year among their four key transfers, the Bears were assembled largely on the fly by Scott Drew, with long, disruptive guards who put Gonzaga’s big men — Drew Timme especially — in mismatch after mismatch, right from the start.
On top of all that, the Bears successfully navigated a late-season COVID pause that threatened to unravel everything they built and cost Baylor a shot at an undefeated season of its own. One hopes overcoming a pandemic is an achievement limited to 2021.
Baylor led by 19 less than 10 minutes into the game and the Zags would only once cut that lead down to single digits, and that only for a matter of seconds. Gonzaga, which only narrowly remained undefeated thanks to Jalen Suggs’ overtime buzzer-beater to beat UCLA on Saturday, didn’t sign up for this.
“They were just so much more aggressive,” Gonzaga coach Mark Few said. “They literally -- we haven’t played like that this year. They literally busted us out of anything we could possibly do on offense.”
Lennie Rosenbluth and the 1957 Tar Heels can rest easy that their exclusive club of seven undefeated national champions will not be adding an eighth member.
Speaking of North Carolina, given how close Few is to Roy Williams, and some of the broader similarities between their philosophies, the way things went Monday may offer an object lesson for Hubert Davis as he takes over at North Carolina. Baylor played smaller (but still dominated the boards), defended aggressively on the perimeter and relied heavily on transfers, all things that would not likely have been said about North Carolina under Williams.
It’s not just the players who have changed, clearly the largely unspoken subtext of Williams’ decision to retire. The game has changed, as the NBA and international influence inevitably exerts a gravitational pull on the college game. Playing two bigs as a rule may no longer be feasible in the modern game; it’s probably not a coincidence North Carolina won a national title in 2017 with Luke Maye as a by-default stretch-4.
Gonzaga picked up Florida transfer Andrew Nembhard and added a one-and-done star in Suggs, but the vast majority of the roster was recruited and developed by Few for the long haul. That’s more North Carolina’s style. Baylor, meanwhile, turned success in the transfer portal into a national championship, adding MaCio Teague from UNC Asheville and Adam Flagler from Presbyterian, among others from UNLV and Auburn.
Davis was promoted in part for continuity, but watching the two best teams in the country play Monday, and only one of them distinguish itself, it was hard not to think about what he might want to change.
These are different times and this was a different kind of season. Gonzaga was on the verge of making history. Baylor was built for right now.
This story was originally published April 5, 2021 at 11:41 PM.
