Baylor roared to a big lead early and kept alive its hopes of reaching the Final Four, defeating Xavier 75-70 in the South regional on Friday at the Georgia Dome.
The Bears led 22-4 with 12:32 to play in the first half before Xavier got as close as 36-29 at halftime. The Musketeers crept closer in the second half, but Baylor held them off.
Quincy Acy led the Bears with 20 points and 15 rebounds, and Pierre Jackson added 16 points and 10 assists.
"Let's give Xavier a lot of credit," Baylor coach Scott Drew said. "They really kept fighting, but I am so proud of our upperclassmen, senior leadership all year long. They did a tremendous job, and when Xavier made their runs, we answered and never let them get on top."
The third-seeded Bears (30-7) advanced to Sunday’s South regional final and will face the winner of Friday’s late game between Kentucky and Indiana. The winner will move on to the Final Four in New Orleans. It's the second time in three years that Baylor has advanced to a regional final. It also marked the 100th win for Baylor's senior class, something Acy said he was proud of.
"How many teams can say that?" he said.
Acy and Jackson provided a lift for Baylor, which won its first two games in the NCAA tournament despite not getting a lot from Perry Jones III or Acy. A 6-foot-11 sophomore, Jones was held to a combined nine points in wins over South Dakota State and Colorado. He averages more than 13 per game. Acy was held to 11 points in the two games. He averages more than 11 points per game. Like Acy, Jones bounced back to score 14 against the Musketeers, making seven of his eight shots.
But it was Acy who stole the headlines with a series of dunks, including one in the second half in which CBS estimated he jumped 11 feet into the air.
"We really stepped up our game," Acy said. "We knew that to continue to win we needed more production from the front line. We took that personally that we needed to do a better job."
Xavier, one of four teams to make the Sweet 16 four times in the past five years, has been led by its guard tandem of Mark Lyons and Tu Holloway. The duo combined to average 32.4 points per game this season, and again did their part by combining for 38 against Baylor.
The difference came down to a familiar problem for Xavier (23-13) in the tournament: a big deficit. The Musketeers trailed Notre Dame by 10 in the second half and rallied. The Musketeers trailed Lehigh by 15 in the first half and rallied.
But they couldn’t erase Baylor, ironically wearing its highlight-pen yellow uniforms.
This time, the Bears opened an 18-point lead less than eight minutes into the game.
"They are more talented than us,” Xavier coach Chris Mack said. “I was honest with my kids. But the last time I checked, effort beats talent. We just didn't -- we weren't quite ready from the beginning to handle the athleticism and the talent that they brought.”
Xavier twice got as close as four with enough time remaining to complete a comeback. The first time, at the end of the first half, Jackson made a 3-pointer to end a Baylor scoreless drought that lasted more than five minutes.
The second time, with 13:27 left in the second half, Anthony Jones made a 3-pointer to stem the comeback.
By the time Xavier cut the deficit to a basket on a 3-pointer by Holloway, there was only 22.2 seconds left, not enough time for the Musketeers.
Baylor’s Brady Heslip made two free throws to push the lead to five. After a layup by Holloway, Heslip made two more to seal the victory.
That the Musketeers got close was impressive.
The Bears took advantage of several Xavier turnovers in the opening five minutes to run to a 22-4 lead with 12:34 left.
Xavier’s guards were able to penetrate fairly easily, but couldn’t finish when trying to avoid the long arms of Baylor’s frontcourt players.
Despite trailing by 17 with 5:21 left, Xavier didn’t panic, but neither did it seem to have any energy.
The Musketeers finally found a spark after a flagrant foul was called against Acy, who pulled down center Kenny Frease with 5:08 left.
Led by Frease, the Muskeeters went on a 13-3 run to cut their deficit to 36-29 by the end of the first half. Frease scored eight points during the run as Xavier’s frontcourt began to more effectively seal off Baylor’s taller team from crashing the offensive glass.
“It was a turning point,” Frease said. “But when you get down that much to a team like Baylor a lot of times you can’t come back from it and we couldn’t.”
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