Unfortunately, that pesky “real” life got in the way yesterday, so we will just make some quick notes on the loss before hitting the road for Stillwater in an hour or so.

1) Free throws finally cost the Horns – You could make the argument that free-throw woes were part of Texas’ downfall at Kansas State and probably build a solid case. But with Saturday’s loss to Baylor, there is simply no doubt. When your opponent needs a putback with miliseconds on the clock just to tie the game, it’s easy to see that 15-of-23 shooting from the line in regulation prevented the win. The Longhorns have actually become even more horrid at the line in conference play, hitting just 59.9% of their attempts and dropping their season average to 61.3%.

2) Bad Jordan showed up – I can’t take credit for the name (that goes to the fine folks at Shaggy Bevo), but there’s no denying that there is a Jekyll-and-Hyde aspect to Hamilton’s play this season. In this game, he took three bad shots and turned it over once in roughly two minutes on the court. That basically equates to four turnovers, which is something the Horns can’t afford if they are going to tighten up the rotation. To compliment the core players, Texas needs a few quality minutes from Jordan every game, not a few nightmarish ones.

3) Jai Lucas needs to move off the ball – It’s a delicate situation, as Jai transferred to Texas because he wanted a chance to play the point. But the guard has been sloppy with the basketball and has yet to prove that he can create his own shot against anyone besides overmatched opponents from small conferences. Against the Bears, Jai managed to turn the ball over three times in his two minutes at the point. As Coach Barnes works on a tighter rotation, Lucas best serves the team as an A.J. Abrams type of marksman. Of course, his height deficiencies make him a liability on defense against most teams, so he should be playing in short stints to bring a scoring spark off the bench at the two.

The Longhorns righted the ship with a high-scoring 95-83 victory over Texas Tech on Wednesday night, but the road ahead remains difficult. Texas hosts Baylor this afternoon, a young but incredibly talented team that is far exceeding its preseason expectations. While many media outlets pegged the Bears as the 10th-best team in the Big 12, they have shown flashes of absolute brilliance even in losses to teams like Kansas and K-State.

Although the Bears lost the senior leadership of Curtis Jerrells and Kevin Rogers after last season, they’ve added an imposing presence in the paint with Michigan transfer Ekpe Udoh. As just a sophomore, the big man broke Chris Webber’s blocked shot record, but he’s added a bevy of offensive moves since arriving in Waco.

Texas fans are very familiar with the backcourt combo of Tweety Carter and LaceDarius Dunn. Both are very quick guards with silky-smooth shots, but Carter has become quite the facilitator in the point guard role this year. He is averaging 6.5 assists to go along with his 16.7 points per game. Dunn, meanwhile, is an incredibly streaky shooter who is very, very dangerous when he gets hot. In a 31-point blowout over Oklahoma earlier this season, he exploded for 28 points on a 6-for-8 performance behind the arc.

In the frontcourt, the Bears are incredibly intimidating. Besides the 6’10” Udoh, Baylor also starts 7-footer Josh Lomers and the 6’10” Anthony Jones. This trio of players gives Coach Scott Drew a back line in his 2-3 zone that blocks a lot of shots and gets great pressure out on the corners and wings. Jones is also a solid outside shooter, which means Texas will have to keep an eye on the pick-and-pop when he is setting screens for Dunn and Carter.

Off the bench, Quincy Acy is a high-energy sixth man who leads the team with a success rate of more than 71% from the field. This number is buoyed by the fact that Acy usually finds himself open for an authoritative dunk at least four or five times a game. If Texas continues its trend of poor defensive rotation, Acy is bound to get a ton of points this afternoon.

Keys to the game

Texas has had a lot of problems against zone defenses this season, and Baylor’s 2-3 is very, very good. The Longhorns have to be patient in their efforts to break down the zone, and simply cannot settle for lazy ball reversal around the perimeter that results in bad three-point looks. Texas must attack the soft middle of the zone and get its share of good looks inside the arc.

In addition, the Longhorns can’t afford to give Baylor a ton of points in transition. Last Saturday, Texas absolutely melted down in the second half against Connecticut, and turnovers were a huge part of the problem. The Bears love to pile up points by pushing the tempo, so Texas needs to limit their turnovers and get back quickly after their offensive possessions.

Texas slid to sixth in both polls this afternoon following back-to-back losses on the road. The Kentucky Wildcats ascended to the top spot as the nation’s lone undefeated team, while Kansas moved up to second in both rankings.

The K-State Wildcats took a slight dip after a home loss to Oklahoma State, even though they were the first team to knock off Texas with a Big Monday victory earlier in the week. KSU is 11th in the media poll and is ranked 13th by coaches. Baylor is the only other Big 12 representative, checking in at 24th in the Associated Press rankings, although Texas A&M, Missouri, and Oklahoma State all received votes in both polls.

The Longhorns also took a dive in Joe Lunardi’s latest Bracketology, sliding to the 2-seed line in the Salt Lake City regional. In Lunardi’s mock bracket, Texas is paired with 1-seed Syracuse, an absolute nightmare match-up for a Longhorn team that is paralyzed by zone defenses.

The Jayhawks maintained their hold on a 1-seed, but were moved to the Houston regional that the Longhorns vacated. Lunardi awarded five other bids to the Big 12, putting K-State (3-seed), Baylor (5), Missouri (8), A&M (9), and Oklahoma State (11) in the mix.

Over the final thirteen games of the conference season, the Baylor Bears mustered just three wins while steadily dropping to the bottom of the league standings. But in only three days of the Big 12 Championship in Oklahoma City, those same Bears have reeled off just as many wins and are now a step away from doing the unthinkable — claiming four victories in four days to steal the league’s automatic bid to the NCAA tournament.

When Coach Scott Drew led last year’s team to the Big Dance, it was the first appearance for the Baptists from the Brazos in 20 years. After an offseason in which the Bears added highly-touted freshmen Quincy Acy and Anthony Jones, the preseason polls had tabbed them as third-best in the conference. But after that brutal 13-game stretch which began in late January, this Baylor team was being mentioned in “biggest disappointment” discussions with the likes of Georgetown and Notre Dame. It wasn’t just the NCAA tournament that was off the radar for this scuttling team. There were doubts as to if they could even to slip into the NIT.

And that’s the beauty of March. With three days of inspired basketball and a storyline that seems like something out of a Disney movie, the embattled Bears are on the brink of something spectacular. But standing in their way are the Missouri Tigers, the other feel-good story of the Big 12 this season. After a year filled with off-court distractions, player dismissals and a disappointing record, they were again picked in the bottom half of the league during preseason polling. But the Tigers defied all odds, upset bitter rival Kansas at home in the Border War, finished a surprising third in the conference, and even ascended to the Top 10 in national polls.

Today’s game will be an interesting case study in which team can impose its will upon the other. Both squads are fantastic ball handlers and turn it over less than 18% of the time, putting them both in the top sixty nationally. But the Tigers are one of the best squads around when it comes to pressuring the basketball and forcing mistakes. Will Mike Anderson‘s team be able to shake up the Bears and gobble up a solid chunk of points off of turnovers? Or will this be a well-controlled game whose winner is the one that plays the smartest, most efficient game?

One huge factor in the outcome could be the fatigue level of the Bears, who have played one more game than the Tigers this week. With Missouri loving to play an up-tempo style, there is a good chance that the Baylor players could get hit with dead legs late in the game. Kevin Rogers, who has averaged 14.7 points per game in the tournament, has also played nearly 37 minutes per game. Curtis Jerrells, the other senior leader in Baylor’s starting five, has played 34 minutes per game over the last three days. While the Missouri starters ate up a lot of minutes last night, the Tigers are a very well-conditioned team that can easily run 10 deep on the bench. If it’s a close game in the final minutes, this could be the deciding factor.

One way for Baylor to mitigate that disadvantage would be to jump out to a big early lead and get the crowd behind the underdogs. With the way Missouri has played the last two nights, that is a distinct possibility. The Tigers looked to be sleepwalking through their quarterfinal against Texas Tech before pulling away in the second half, and they shot just 25.8% in the first twenty minutes against Oklahoma State. Missouri is a team that will score in bunches, to if the Bears can take advantage of another slow start, it will give them the added cushion they’ll need to withstand those Tiger streaks.

When the final buzzer sounded following Baylor’s third-straight win over a higher-seeded team in the Big 12 Championship, thoughts weren’t on the end of the Bears’ 24-game losing streak to Texas. “We came in here with a mindset, with a task,” Curtis Jerrells said. “Today was step three.” With their 76-70 win over Texas, the Bears have finished step three and have only one remaining — a win over 3rd-seeded Missouri on Saturday to reach the NCAA tournament.

Just a day after hitting six three-pointers in the huge upset victory over Kansas, LaceDarius Dunn was limited to just one long-range bomb in this one. But he timed it well, sinking the three with just over a minute left on the clock to give Baylor a 67-65 lead it would never relinquish. The sophomore finished with 16 points, including five out of six free throws as Texas desperately fouled over the final 24 seconds.

Once again, the big man for Baylor was senior Kevin Rogers. He abused the Longhorns for 20 points by getting to the rim, kissing jumpers off the glass, and even knocking down fifteen-footers without batting an eye. But most importantly, Rogers combined with Josh Lomers and Mamadou Diene to limit Texas to just 26 points in the paint, just over half its average for the tournament.

One reason the Longhorns couldn’t get anything going down low was the defense that trio played against Dexter Pittman. The big center had only seven points in this game, and was completely ineffective over the final six minutes after he injured his leg in a loose ball scrum. Pittman missed all four of his free throws after that point and grabbed just two rebounds.

His injury may have also played a factor on the crucial rebound where he failed to box out Jerrells after Dunn missed a free throw with 24 seconds left and Baylor leading by only three. With the offensive board secured, the Bears hit their next two free throws and kept the game out of reach for good.

For Texas, the biggest problem once again was an inability to close out halves. All season long, the Horns have had issues letting teams put together runs in the final few minutes of a half, and this game was no exception. Over the final 2:13 of the first half, Texas allowed Baylor to put together an 8-2 run, and the Longhorns gave up six straight points in the next-to-last minute of the game which allowed the Bears to seize the lead for good. Whether it is a lack of focus or a result of tired legs, the simple fact of the matter is that Texas has struggled with this issue all season long, and the Horns will have to address it if they plan to make any noise in the NCAAs.

One reassuring trend for this tournament was the play of A.J. Abrams, who was much more efficient with his shot selection. The senior guard was 14-of-27 over the three-game stretch, including a 40% success rate from behind the arc. If Abrams is still shooting close to 50% once the elimination games start next weekend, Texas has much better odds for success. But if he reverts to the early-season form in which he continued to force up bad looks when he was struggling, the Longhorns could be done after just one game.

For the Baylor Bears, the fourth step of their task awaits them this evening. We’ll be back with a wrap of the Oklahoma State/Missouri game and a quick look at tonight’s championship match-up.