MORE THAN A SNAPSHOT
Baylor's 'Body of Work' Puts Bears Among Best

By Jerry Hill
Baylor Bear Foundation

Considering that half of last year's Final Four didn't even make it back to the field at all, the Baylor men's basketball team's run of four straight NCAA Tournament berths is even more impressive.

The Bears (27-8) snapped a two-year string of first-round losses with a 91-73 win over New Mexico State and got by USC, 82-78, before falling to South Carolina, 70-50, in last Friday's region final in New York.

"I think we all just remember and put so much onus on the last game and the last year, and sometimes we forget the past," said 14th-year Baylor head coach Scott Drew. "To me, how you look at a program isn't a snapshot, it's a body of work.

"To be ranked in the top 25 for 10 straight years, that's great consistency. To go to two Elite Eights and two Sweet 16s in the last eight years, that's hard to do. And then to go to four straight NCAA Tournaments. . . . when you've got two Final Four teams that didn't make the tournament, it shows you the parity in college basketball and it shows you how tough it is to do."

This year's team also did something no other Baylor team has done. On Jan. 9, after a 15-0 start, the Bears were ranked No. 1 in both the Associated Press and coaches' polls for the first time in program history.

They made the fastest climb from unranked to No. 1 in AP poll history. After not receiving a single vote in the preseason or first weekly poll, the Bears claimed the top spot eight weeks later and joined 1978-79 Indiana State, 1989-90 Kansas and 2009-10 Syracuse as the only teams to go from unranked to No. 1.

"There's nothing better than overachieving," Drew said. "To go from no votes to the first time in school history being ranked No. 1, that's something that this team will always have, being the first team to ever be ranked No. 1. That's a great honor and tribute, because that's really hard to do with 351 schools. Then, you tie the school record for regular-season wins (25). And anytime you make it to a Sweet 16, it's a good year. You always want to go farther every year, but there's only one happy team at the end."

It was a tough ending for the Bears, who shot just 30.4 percent (17-of-56), turned it over 16 times and got outrebounded (40-37) for just the fifth time all year. A bench that had been so good all year shot just 1-for-17 from the floor and scored 11 points against the Gamecocks.

"Nobody stepped up that game, and we've always had people step up," Drew said. "We had decent looks, more than I thought, and we just missed shots. I think we had four air balls in the first half. And when you miss shots, that allows South Carolina to get in transition, and they really hurt us in transition. If we make those shots, now we take them out of transition and we have our defense set. That allows us to get in transition if we get stops."

What that loss does, though, is make the Bears even hungrier to get farther next year.

"Postseason success is huge for the following year, because that extends your practice time, extends the pressure-packed games and just dealing with that and preparing for it," Drew said. "For your freshmen, for all your players that get to experience that, now they're just better prepared and it makes them hungrier. . . . When you get to the Sweet 16, you want to go to the Final Four. You look at Oregon last year, making the Elite Eight, and now they're in the Final Four."

One of the biggest keys to the team's success this year was the senior leadership of Ishmail Wainright, who "made sure the chemistry on the team was good."

"If you have good leadership and good chemistry, it allows you to utilize the depth rather than people being upset with their playing time or their minutes," Drew said. "It's easier to sacrifice for the team when you believe in the cause."

This year also marked the emergence of 6-foot-10 junior forward Johnathan Motley. The program's first-ever consensus All-American and unanimous first-team All-Big 12 pick, he averaged 17.3 points, 9.9 rebounds, 2.3 assists and 1.1 blocks and led the league in double-doubles with 15.

Projected as a first-round NBA draft pick by most experts, Motley has until May 24 to decide whether to forego his senior season. If he does return, the Bears will likely be a preseason top-10 pick and potentially the favorite to unseat Kansas as Big 12 champions.

The exciting part, Drew said, is that Motley has "improved each and every year and become more and more dominant." And if he does come back, the Houston, Texas, native can improve his 3-point shooting and assist-to-turnover ratio and "being able to hold and get position in the paint and finish versus physical guys."

Baylor also got solid years out of Miami transfer Manu Lecomte (12.2 ppg, 3.8 assists) at point guard and 7-footer Jo Lual-Acuil, who averaged 9.1 points, 6.7 rebounds and a Big 12-best 2.5 blocks after transferring and then sitting out last year.

"The big shots he made, that's something you can never predict or project how someone's going to perform in crunch time, because he really hadn't been in those situations a lot at Miami," Drew said of Lecomte. "it was someone else taking the shot. Defensively, he definitely improved in that year out. And then, he showed that he could run a team. That was something coming in that people hadn't seen him do, because Angel Rodriguez ran the Miami team. But, he did a very good job of that for us."

Lual-Acuil was a defensive presence for the Bears, particularly early in the year, "and then in conference people got more physical with him," Drew said.

"That's where another summer with (strength coach Charlie Melton) is going to really help him in being able to handle the rigors of the Big 12 and the physicality of the league. . . . He developed the mental side this year, and the physical side will come next year."

In addition to Wainright and possibly Motley, the Bears also lose fourth-year junior guard Al Freeman, who will graduate at the end of the semester and transfer to another school. He averaged 9.7 points this season and finished his career with 848 points, 255 rebounds, 128 assists and 50 steals in 99 games.

"Al has been a tremendous student-athlete and made great contributions to our program over the last four years, and we're thrilled that he's going to complete his degree at Baylor," Drew said. "He'll always be part of the Baylor family, and we'll be rooting for him as he continues his career."

Even without Freeman, the Bears have good depth at the perimeter positions with Lecomte, sophomore guards Jake Lindsey and King McClure, redshirt freshman Chuck Mitchell and Tyson Jolly, a 6-4 freshman guard who redshirted this season along with 6-5 forward Mark Vital.

In the front line, the Bears will have Lual-Acuil, possibly Motley, junior forwards Terry Maston and Nuni Omot, Vital and 6-8 signee Tristan Clark from San Antonio.

"That's why we've been successful over the years," Drew said. "You look at last year. You lose your point guard, you lose your all-time leading rebounder and you lose a lottery pick in (Taurean Prince). That's why people didn't project us that highly. But collectively, you have different people step up. That's where returning players take on bigger roles, from Jo to TJ to Nuni. And then everybody else on the perimeter has to step it up. You do return a lot of experience and a lot of people that have had opportunities to play minutes.

"The stability of a program is having people who now have an opportunity to step up, and being able to. And we've had that."