SIOUX FALLS, S.D. — Near the end of Baylor’s practice on Thursday afternoon at the Sanford Pentagon, injured big man Jonathan Tchamwa Tchatchoua approached special assistant Bill Peterson and said he was bothered by what he was seeing from his teammates.
Scott Drew’s program had elevated itself to elite status over the previous three seasons because of its defense and a desire to be great on that end. The Bears always had multiple players who made it a personal goal to be Big 12 Defensive Player of the Year. Last season, Tchamwa Tchatchoua made it his goal, which he achieved.
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“Maybe I’m wrong,” Tchamwa Tchatchoua told his teammates, “but I have not seen anyone take that to heart.”
The Bears arrived in Sioux Falls with an identity crisis after getting drubbed Tuesday at Marquette. It wasn’t just the deficit; it was the lack of effort and intensity on the defensive end. Marquette coach Shaka Smart had a terrific game plan, built on getting into the teeth of Baylor’s defense and taking advantage of over-helping with skip passes. Baylor offered little resistance, and Marquette had the most efficient night against Baylor’s defense in nine years.
That type of effort would no longer be tolerated, and the intensity was mostly high at practice Thursday. “Our volume is so much better,” athletic trainer Dave Snyder observed as he watched the Bears go through a shell drill from the sideline.
But near the end of practice, a few bad offensive possessions triggered a dip. When one team didn’t even get to half-court on a steal and dunk, soft-spoken assistant coach Alvin Brooks III spoke up.
“Look at me! Look at me!” Brooks shouted. “A lot of it isn’t scheme. It’s effort!”
The coaching staff did make some small tweaks that they hoped would protect against what Marquette was able to do so easily. Ball pressure was an emphasis, and the coaches wanted to shrink the floor, making it so the Bears weren’t in such long closeouts.
The other big focus, since Gonzaga was the next opponent: Limit the scoring opportunities for All-American Drew Timme.
“The faster we get to Timme, the more he can dribble with people in gaps,” assistant coach John Jakus instructed the team. “If he doesn’t see that, we’re in trouble.”
Jakus, who spent three seasons on Mark Few’s staff at Gonzaga, was in charge of the scout, just as he’d been two years ago in the national championship game, when Timme was held to 12 points on seven shots. The plan wasn’t that much different this time around. “Never lose touch of Timme’s hip,” Jakus said, meaning someone had better be stuck on him like glue at all times.
The Bears were about to face arguably the hardest player in the country to guard, and he wasn’t going to be the one to beat them.
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— Baylor Men’s Basketball (@BaylorMBB) December 3, 2022
Timme stood near the baseline, stretching before the ball was inbounded to start the second half Friday night, and he met eyes with Brooks, who coaches Baylor’s defense. “Will you give me one free post-up?” Timme said, smirking. “Come on, man. I can’t get one shot.”
The plan was working. Timme made two free throws in the first half and had just one field goal attempt as the Bears made it tough for him to catch the ball and swarmed him with a double team — and sometimes even triple team — whenever Gonzaga did get it to him.
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Timme made the smart basketball plays, skipping the ball to open teammates on the other side of the floor. Baylor was fortunate that Gonzaga missed some easy looks early off Timme’s passes, but Baylor’s urgency to recover was different than four days earlier.
What made the national title team so good was those guys made multiple efforts on every defensive possession. For the first time all season, this group was playing like that.
The results told the story. Timme was held to nine points, his first time not in double figures this season and only the fifth time in the past three years, in Baylor’s 64-63 victory. Gonzaga scored 0.84 points per possession, its lowest output against a non-conference opponent since its 2011 NCAA Tournament loss to Kansas State.
It almost wasn’t enough because Gonzaga’s defense was also terrific, particularly in the second half, when a hard-hedging ball screen coverage kept Baylor operating far from the basket. On some possessions, the Bears never even got inside the 3-point line, and while Baylor had controlled the game, Gonzaga inched ahead and held a seven-point lead after a Malachi Smith breakaway dunk with 1:41 left on the clock.
It looked like Baylor was destined for its third loss of the season until senior Adam Flagler raced down the court and buried a quick 3. Baylor got a much-needed stop, and Flagler sped the ball up the court again before the Zags could get set, and he used a drag screen from Flo Thamba to free himself for another 3 to cut the lead to one. “We did just a phenomenal job all game and we just let our guard down on the last one,” Gonzaga coach Mark Few said.
Timme set a ball screen for point guard Nolan Hickman and got Baylor to switch, leaving the 6-foot-10 Thamba guarding Hickman and the 6-foot-3 Flagler trying to front Timme in the post. When Gonzaga got the ball to Smith on the left wing with an angle to deliver the ball to Timme, Baylor freshman Keyonte George lurked behind Timme, scaring Smith off that pass. Instead, he skipped it to the opposite corner, and George was able to recover to Anton Watson, who then passed over to Rasir Bolton. Bridges was there on the catch. Multiple efforts, old-school Baylor style, had stymied the plan. Bolton, with just seconds left on the shot clock, tried to go at Bridges.
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A day earlier, Jakus had told the players to make the Zags “feel our chest.” And Drew had shouted to “protect the house” — that being the paint.
As Bolton drove from the slot toward the left block, his shoulder collided with Bridges’ chest, which kept him from getting his feet in the paint. And then he lost the ball as the shot clock expired, giving Baylor back the ball with 32.9 seconds left and a chance to win.
One other thing that has made Baylor great through the years: crashing the offensive glass. That’s the one area Gonzaga definitively won Friday night, but when Flagler let go of what would have been the go-ahead basket from the right wing, Bridges went from beyond the 3-point line on the opposite side, raced through the paint and grabbed the offensive rebound. Timme caught him with an elbow in the back — it was questionable whether it was a foul — but the officials whistled it, sending Bridges to the line.
Bridges was supposed to be the missing piece when Baylor got him out of the transfer portal this past spring. Drew had a deep and talented backcourt, and he returned a veteran in Thamba at center, but he needed a 3-and-D-type small-ball four-man. He knew Bridges had talent from playing against him four times over his first two seasons, and he bet on Bridges’ being able to recapture his freshman form shooting the ball when he made 48.9 percent of his 3s in conference play.
Bridges started strong in his first three games, averaging 16 points, but he hasn’t scored in double figures since, and he’d missed 12 straight 3-point attempts coming into Friday night. His defense also hadn’t been stellar.
But after getting the key stop of the game, this was his chance to really make his mark for the first time for the Bears.
Bridges calmly sank the first free throw, then hit the front of the rim on the second. The ball skipped over the rim and in, giving Baylor the 64-63 lead that would hold after one final defensive stand at the buzzer. Afterward in the locker room, Thamba, holding the game ball, handed it off to Bridges.
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Bridges took deep breaths as he tried to hold his emotions in.
“It’s tough going into a program where people have to accept you and value you,” Drew said. “He’s such a caring kid.”
While Bridges didn’t shoot it well again from the perimeter — making just 1-of-6 3s — he made all four of his free throws, and he looked more like the guy Drew and his staff envisioned. So did George. The freshman buried three high-degree-of-difficulty 3s, and more importantly, he was the one Baylor guard who could get his feet in the paint at will and finish, leading the Bears with 18 points.
“Keyonte being a bigger guard, he’s an elite finisher,” Drew said, “and when he gets to the paint, it opens up things for everybody.”
Sometimes Baylor’s guards settle for too many outside shots without getting paint touches, but maybe this was the night George figured that out. That offense still looks like a work in progress, but the Bears are 13th in the country in effective field goal percentage and have three guards — Flagler, George and LJ Cryer — who can go off at any moment.
“Those guards are good,” Few said. “I mean, their combination of guards are as good as there is in the country.”
It’s hard to envision that the Bears don’t figure out how to be a really good offensive team. Kind of like it was with Davion Mitchell, Jared Butler and MaCio Teague.
What made that group champions, of course, is it was elite on both ends.
This was just one game in late November, but it sure was a drastic change from four days earlier, and it was against the team that ranks No. 1 in adjusted efficiency in college basketball, a point Drew emphasized in the locker room after the game.
This wasn’t the ideal scenario this week, but Drew realized it might have been exactly what his team needed.
“When you get embarrassed, you just get bought in more in your scout. You get more bought into your effort,” he said. “And, I mean, you never want to go through games like that. But sometimes, sometimes you need that. Because when coaches find out you need something, players find out you need something, it’s easy to get it through. When things are going well, sometimes you don’t make major changes.”
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One tweak and one attitude adjustment later, Baylor is a team that wants to guard again. Wants to be stoppers. Maybe someone will even declare a desire to be Big 12 Defensive Player of the Year.
“Anyone that says we can’t guard,” Drew said, a smile back on his face, “that’s gone.”
(Photo of Baylor defenders converging on Gonzaga’s Rasir Bolton: Steven Branscombe / USA Today)
