Worth the wait: Baylor beats Gonzaga, finally shows it’s No. 1 a year after COVID-19 canceled the NCAA Tournament

INDIANAPOLIS — For Baylor, the wait was more than worth it.

Four months after seeing COVID-19 cancel their game with Gonzaga and a year after watching March Madness fall victim to the pandemic, the Bears finally got to make a statement about just who was the best basketball team in the country.

At the end of Championship Monday, the Lucas Oil Stadium scoreboard read: Baylor 86, Gonzaga 70.

The Baptist school that didn’t allow dancing on campus until 1996 are now the masters of the Big Dance. First song: “One Shining Moment.”

“Our guys have been motivated all year,” Baylor coach Scott Drew said. “We’re a culture of joy. They came out and fed off each other.”

That legendary 1966 Texas Western team now has company, with Baylor becoming the second team from the Lone Star State to win a men’s title. The Bears are the first Big 12 team to take home the championship trophy since Kansas in 2008.

Baylor players en masse sprinted to the courtside media table, stood on top of it and saluted their fan contingent among the 8,000 or so in the arena.

Coach Scott Drew, who took over a program in basketball purgatory after the murder of a player by a teammate and saddled with harsh NCAA penalties, hugged Gonzaga counterpart Mark Few, a close friend.

Green and gold confetti fell onto the court.

For the longest time, people had questioned Drew’s coaching acumen and his ability to take a team to the Final Four after regional final losses in 2010 and ’12. This performance should quiet any remaining critics.

Jared Butler, who was named the most outstanding player in the Final Four, led Baylor with 22 points and seven assists. MaCio Teague added 19 points and Davion Mitchell chipped in 15 points. Adam Flagler scored 13 off the bench. That’s a combined 69 points by the guards.

“The better the opponent, the better they play,” Drew said.

Baylor scored the game’s first nine points and was in control from there. The nation’s best 3-point shooting team knocked down 10 of 23 3-pointers and outrebounded Gonzaga 38-22.

Freshman standout Jalen Suggs led the Zags with 22 points despite picking up two early fouls.

Not even Gonzaga, trying to be the first undefeated national champion since Bob Knight-coached Indiana in 1976, could match the Bears combination of athleticism, harassing defense and 3-point shooting. Of course, few in the Big 12 could either.

“Listen, Baylor just beat us,” Few said. “They beat us in every facet of the game and deserve all the credit.”

Baylor (28-2) only had one game in the NCAA Tournament closer than double-figures, and that was a nine-point win over Arkansas in the regional finals. The average margin of victory in the Final Four: 17.5 points.

Actually, only the pandemic really managed to slow the Bears down. Baylor went through a 21-day COVID-19 shutdown — including 18 consecutive days without even a complete practice — in February. Regaining their mojo was far from easy. Losses to Kansas and Oklahoma State made Baylor seem human, even vulnerable.

By the time the NCAA Tournament arrived, the Bears were their old dominant, scary selves.

If Baylor had any jitters about being in its first NCAA championship in 73 years, they didn’t show. The last time Baylor had gone this far in the tournament was 1948, and the Bears lost to Kentucky in the finals at Madison Square Garden.

“We weren’t alive back then,” Drew joked in the postgame celebration.

The Bears led 11-1 barely four minutes into the game. How dominant has Baylor been? In its 30 games this season, the Bears had led by at least 10 points in 27 of those. But even by Baylor standards, that was awfully quick against the tournament’s No. 1 overall seed that was chasing perfection.

When Jonathan Tchamwa Tchatchoua threw down a dunk eight minutes into the game, Baylor led 23-8 — and Gonzaga was facing its biggest deficit of the season.

“They punched us in the mouth, right from the get-go,” Gonzaga forward Corey Kispert said.

Baylor led by as many as 19 in the first half, although Gonzaga cut the halftime margin to 47-37.

Just as they started the game, the Bears were impressive to begin the second half. Butler hit two 3-pointers in the first 61 seconds.

“And that’s what we didn’t want him to do. We wanted him to bounce it,” Few said. “He’s a complete player. And he’s a deadly 3-point shooter.”

After Gonzaga cut the Baylor margin under double figures at 58-49 on a layup by Adam Nembhard, the Bears responded with a 9-2 run capped by a 3-pointer by Flagler.

After starting his career at Presbyterian in the Big South Conference, Flagler is among the transfers that Drew identified and developed into rotation players.

Five of Baylor’s eight rotation players were transfers, including Butler, Mitchell and Teague.

Drew noted that Baylor has been the best team in the power conferences the past two years.

“Our team has been special,” Drew said.

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