By Bryan Burwell, St. Louis Post-Dispatch –
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The Sprint Center had suddenly gone silent. For most of the early evening, there was this sea of blue overwhelming the arena, legions of Kansas fans screaming their lungs out trying to will their top-seeded Jayhawks back into the Big 12 tournament semifinals. But now as the final seconds ticked off the clock, it was painfully obvious that the night was not going exactly as planned.
(PHOTO: Kansas’ Thomas Robinson (0) looks to put a shot up along the baseline as Baylor’s Perry Jones III, right, defends in the first half in the semifinals of the Big 12 Tournament at the Sprint Center on Friday, March 9, 2012, in Kansas City, Missouri.)
The perfect Mizzou-Kansas weekend hoop party that we all assumed the Big 12 tournament would be had just been abruptly ruined by these rude party crashers from Baylor. The Bears have spent most of the season as the biggest mystery team in the conference, a befuddling group of players whose reputations were built mostly on how they had failed to live up to their wondrously athletic gifts.
But the Bears seem to have arrived in Kansas City reborn. For two nights in a row, Baylor has played up to its full frightening capabilities. Perry Jones III is playing like an NBA lottery pick. Point guard Pierre Jackson is running the offense to perfection and every one of these future NBA giants who surround him are raising their games to another level.
“We know what time of the year it is,” said Jackson.
And on Friday night, it all came together as they ran KU out of the city, ruining any chance at Missouri-Kansas Part III. By the end of the evening, after they had calmly knocked off third-ranked KU, 81-70, the Bears had forced half the arena — all those blue-clad Kansas fans — to flee for the exits.
So now the only way we’ll get to see more of Kansas and Mizzou playing is if they meet again in the NCAAs, which is certainly not out of the realm of possibility considering both teams should be No. 1 or No. 2 seeds when the field of 68 is announced on Sunday evening.
We interrupt this column for this fractured view of what happened last night:
Paranoid Missouri fan: “Bill Self didn’t want to play us again, so he shafted us.”
Truly paranoid Mizzou fan: “The Texas Network shafted us.”
We kid because we love.
The truth is, Baylor played the spoiler role to perfection. The Bears won 27 games this year for a very good reason. Look at them. Name me one team outside of Kentucky that has so many truly gifted future NBA players. Yet everyone in college basketball and a lot of NBA scouts look at the Bears every week and scratch their heads. They see Jones, who at 6-11, 235 pounds, looks like he is ready made to start in the pros, but plays so incredibly inconsistent. One day he is capable of lighting up the scoreboard like Kevin Durant, and the next game he’s just as likely to score three points and grab five rebounds. But something seems to have gotten into Jones this weekend, and perhaps it’s all those pro scouts sitting in the first three rows behind the north end basket.
Even with Kansas’ All-America and conference player of the year Thomas Robinson on the floor, Jones played like he was the best player in the game. On Thursday night, Jones had 31 points (on 11-of-14 shooting) and 11 rebounds. On Friday, he followed that up with 18 points, seven rebounds, two assists and one steal. If he keeps playing like this Mizzou will have its hands full in today’s tournament final.
You knew Kansas was going to make a desperate run as this game came down to the end, and that’s exactly what happened. With less than a minute to go, the noise inside the Sprint Center was getting deafening as KU drew within 75-70 on a Travis Releford layup.
But the final 55 seconds turned into a tribute to Baylor’s calmness under fire. Kansas kept missing jumpers and the Bears kept stroking in free throws. That’s what good teams do, and finally after going 0-4 against Mizzou and Kansas this season, the Bears rose up and knocked off one of the conference’s big boys.
So the show will go on today without Kansas. The Sprint Center should be a sold-out building full of black and gold, proving Mizzou senior Kim English prophetic when he said KC was a Tiger town more than a Jayhawk one.
After the game someone asked KU coach Bill Self if he felt any relief knowing he wouldn’t have to deal with all the commotion associated with one more game against Mizzou.
“Zero,” Self said.
When asked if he was OK with how apparently the century-old Border War would conclude, Self sort of changed his previous tune.
“I never said I was all right with the rivalry ending,” he said. “I’d love for it to go on. It’s just not going to. … So we had two epic games with them this year. Two epic games. And it’s unfortunate that it’s going to end.”
