After rising to the first No. 1 ranking in school history, the Baylor Bears would have been disappointed if they didn’t make it to the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament. Baylor started the season strong, sitting with a 20-1 record at one point, but things came apart after that with the team finishing up 5-6 down the stretch prior to the start of the Big Dance. Now they are likely the favorites to win an East bracket that has been decimated with the losses of Villanova and Duke, but need to beat the South Carolina Gamecocks if they want to realize Final Four aspirations.
Don't miss this Sweet 16 showdown from Madison Square Garden in New York at 7:29 p.m. ET on Friday. Catch every moment of the game live on TBS.
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Odds Analysis
As of press time, there has been no line posted for this game. The general thought is that Baylor will be a short favorite in this game, perhaps 3 or 4 points, but there’s no way of knowing for sure until the linesmakers set a number.
How They Got Here
Baylor did not look sharp to close out the regular season with even its wins coming as a struggle no matter how weak the opponent. The Bears lost to Texas Tech on the road and only beat the Red Raiders at home by four points, nearly lost to Oklahoma at home, and lost to Kansas State twice. Fortunately for the Bears though, they have had a manageable run in the tournament, having played two double-digit seeds.
Those double-digit seeds ended up giving the Bears some stiff competition though. New Mexico State was up on Baylor at half and the Bears were dreading another first round exit until the bench started making plays. Baylor’s bench ended up hitting 64 percent from the field and outscored New Mexico by 26 points to spark the run that pulled the Bears away from the Aggies for good.
South Carolina may wear the biggest slipper for a Cinderella we have ever seen as a power conference team, but the label fits after what this team has done considering how it finished the season. The Gamecocks crashed out of the SEC Tournament early after a double-digit loss to Alabama and only won two of their last seven conference games.
This team found new life in March thanks to some offensive performances that were well outside the norm. South Carolina scored 54 points in the second half to get past Marquette on a night when it shot 53 percent from the floor and somehow one-upped that with 65 points in the second half against Duke. That is well outside the standard deviation range for South Carolina and there is no chance it can keep that up, but it might be able to keep up the pressure defense that forced 17 Marquette turnovers and 18 Duke turnovers.
Comparable Games of Note
Give the Bears credit, following their first-round exit last season, they went out and scheduled some great opponents to prep themselves for March this time around. Baylor faced seven teams that ended up making the NCAA Tournament in non-conference play and the list is littered with names like Michigan State, Oregon, Louisville, and Xavier. The Bears beat them all and that should give this team plenty of confidence heading into a matchup with another power conference team in South Carolina.
South Carolina played some decent teams out of conference as well, but didn’t do so great against them. The pinnacle was the Gamecocks consecutive wins over Michigan and Syracuse, but this team also lost to Seton Hall, Clemson, and Memphis. They are averaging just 73.1 PPG and are outside the Top 100 in every major offensive category so you know this team is coming back down to Earth, the only question is how flat will they fall.
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