Who knew that trying to cram four days with a 40-hour work week, a 20-hour drive to Greensboro, a little bit of sleep, and a lot of game watching would be next to impossible? Unfortunately, I’m only about 30 minutes from hitting the road for this weekend’s game(s?) in North Carolina, and I’ve spent maybe a total of 15 minutes looking at the brackets since the selection show. As a result, the bracket I just threw together in the last five minutes looks like…well, a bracket thrown together in five minutes.

If you want to challenge (and destroy) that bracket in a free pool, click on over to the Longhorn Road Trip group in the SI Bracket Challenge on Facebook. Winner will earn unending fame on LRT and their choice of one of next year’s two t-shirt designs.

We’re going to be cutting it close on the back end of this trip, as we should be pulling into Greensboro about four hours before the Longhorns tip against the Gophers. I’m not sure what kind of preview (if any) I’ll be able to write for the game, but you can get your hoops fix covered by reading the preview from the fine folks at Burnt Orange Nation and seeing what fellow our blogpollers at The Daily Gopher think about Thursday night’s match-up.

In the meantime, think fondly of us as we travel the long, purple line below. Because while you might wish that you were skipping work to criss-cross the country on a basketball sojourn, the fact of the matter is that we’ll be in the middle of nowhere running on a refined mixture of Starburst, Wheat Thins, and energy drinks. We’re just living the dream.

We’re still recovering from a half-week of twelve-hour days of basketball, while also trying to lock down accommodations and travel plans for the Greensboro pod this weekend. Our take on the bracket plus photos and pictures from Missouri’s Big 12 title win will be headed your way in the late afternoon Tuesday night. In the meantime, have fun filling out those brackets!

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.

Following Baylor’s historic win over Texas in the first semifinal of the day, fans were looking forward to another great game in the nightcap, a re-match that was expected to be a forty-minute offensive showcase. When Oklahoma State and Missouri first met at Gallagher-Iba Arena earlier this season, the Cowboys rallied back from nearly 20 points down but fell just short in an exhausting 97-95 shootout. Although it had been nearly two months, the game was still fresh on the minds of boosters from both universities. Unfortunately, things didn’t go exactly as scripted.

[3] Missouri 67, [7] Oklahoma State 59

The Cowboys came into this one shooting nearly 40% from long range on the year, putting them in the top 25 nationally for three-point shooting. The Tigers, meanwhile, boasted the country’s 15th-most efficient offense, and the 17th-fastest tempo of basketball. All signs pointed to another game testing the century mark, bound to keep the capacity Ford Center crowd on its feet. That was before they put lids on the rims.

Oklahoma State didn’t hit a three-pointer for the first 34 minutes of the game, while Missouri mustered only 21 points in the first half. The two teams were still sprinting up and down the court, forcing turnovers and creating havoc. But the two teams combined to shoot only 28% in the first twenty minutes, causing one Tiger fan behind us to wrack his brain trying to remember the last time his team had such a futile start.

The big moment of the night came after halftime, but it had an unfortunate beginning late in the first session. Byron Eaton injured his ankle on a fast break and laid on the court for what seemed like minutes. After being helped off the court by two teammates, he spent the rest of the half with his face buried in a towel as team medical staff tended to his foot. When the Cowboys returned to the court in the second half, their senior leader was nowhere to be found, and the orange-filled Ford Center was abnormally quiet. But moments later, Eaton sprinted out of the tunnel to a roaring ovation and joined his team for the shootaround.

While Eaton was largely ineffective the rest of the game and the upset bid ultimately fell short, his effort was gutsy. Most pundits already had the Cowboys in the NCAA field, so it may have been more prudent to play it safe and shut him down for the rest of the game. But Eaton, always a fierce competitor, wanted to go back out and help his team, and the lift he provided by returning was immeasurable.

For Missouri, the game was strange not only because of their early offensive struggles, but also because of the fact that Coach Mike Anderson stuck with a smaller core of players for a bulk of the minutes. While ten different Tigers average more than 12 minutes a game, the starters ate a huge chunk of the minutes in this one. Every one of the five starters played at least 25 minutes, while only Marcus Denmon cracked the 12-minute plateau from the bench. While it’s true the Tigers have played one less game than Baylor as the teams head into tonight’s championship, it will be interesting to see if there is enough fatigue from this up-tempo semifinal to affect Anderson’s rotation.

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.