SAN ANTONIO — First Nebraska lost its poise, then it lost its coach and finally the game, as sixth-seeded Baylor rolled to a 74-60 NCAA Tournament East Regional second-round victory at AT&T Center, leaving its former Big 12 rival flattened, flustered and thoroughly frustrated.
Baylor (25-11) jumped out to an early lead, and made Nebraska look like a team in the Big Dance for the first time since 1998. Cornhuskers coach Tim Miles even got ejected with 11:17 to play, while the Bears rolled into Sunday’s third-round game against Creighton, eyeing a third Elite Eight trip in five years.
“The past Elite Eights we did have were good runs, but this year we’re just looking at it as checking it one game at a time,” said Bears senior Cory Jefferson, who had a team-high 16 points. “We had ours today — the next one’s on Sunday. We’ll look at one game, and we’ll move on from there.’’
They moved on, with Nebraska (19-13) — 0-7 all-time in the NCAA Tournament — little more than a speed bump.
“We got off to a slow start and we got frustrated. It’s tough to come back from that,’’ senior Ray Gallegos said. Or, as Shavon Shields succinctly summed up, “We lost our minds a little bit.’’
Or a lot. Baylor’s zone forced Nebraska to miss nine of its first 10 shots as the Bears took a 12-3 lead. Frustration followed, and then fouls, with Baylor going 38-of-38 from the stripe. Miles epitomized that, getting hit with one technical with 13:53 left after Terran Petteway (game-high 18 points) got called for his fourth foul, and another while trailing 46-32 for trying to point out the shot clock hadn’t started.
“That’s something we can go correct, and the official came over and T’d me up,’’ Miles said. “I said, ‘It’s the shot clock, it never ran.’ I was trying to look for the shot-clock operator, and I’m assuming it’s the guy that just dropped his head, so I’m getting no help there. He’d already T’d me up for being out of the coaching box.’’
“I’m just trying to get the game in line. I’m like, ‘That’s a correctible error.‘He’s like, ‘It’s too late; you’re gone.’ I mean, what do you do?’’
Ref Karl Hess said in a statement “Prior to the second technical foul call, there was a shot clock error that both the shot clock operator and officials did not notice. The error should have been noticed and could have been corrected.”
But, Hess added “The coach from Nebraska was assessed a class A technical foul due to the parameters of rule 10, section 3, article 2, items E and F. The penalty for the second technical foul was ejection — by rule.’’