From the program’s low point, Baylor men’s basketball reaches the mountaintop

The Baylor men’s basketball program was nearly decimated by a scandal in 2003 when Scott Drew was hired to do a major rebuild, never daring to dream that one day the Bears would rule the sport as national champions.

With the program crippled by major NCAA sanctions that included a reduction to six scholarships, Drew needed to find players so he conducted tryouts for students who wanted to walk on to the team.

“Going into every game being 30- or 40-point underdogs and half your team walk-ons, you know as a coach, ‘If we can just keep it within 20 by the first half or 10.’ But really credit those guys who won three games that year. They laid the foundation,” Drew said late Monday night after Baylor stunned previously unbeaten Gonzaga, 86-70, to win the program’s first-ever championship.

“Those guys have stayed with the program and helped support these guys. And that’s what you love. Over 18 years, there’s so many people that put in hard work and sweat. All our past players constantly come back in the summertime, constantly help our young guys, send them messages, encourage them. I mean, it’s their championship as much as ours.”

The scandal began when a Baylor player was murdered by a former teammate, and grew as Dave Bliss, the head coach at the time, allegedly tried to cover up the crime by making payments to four players and statements to the media that the victim was involved in drugs. NCAA sanctions included recruiting limitations and a ban from playing nonconference games in the 2005-06 season.

Drew led the Bears to an NCAA Tournament berth in 2008 and the team has been there eight times since. Prior to this season, they had reached the Sweet 16 four times and the Elite Eight twice. But Baylor (28-2) went the full route this season, winning its six games by an average of 15.3 points, including a 62-51 victory over Villanova in the Sweet 16.

No. 1 overall seed Gonzaga (31-1) entered Monday night’s game at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis seeking to become the first undefeated national champion since Indiana in 1976. And even though the Bears were generally considered to be the nation’s second-best team, their complete dominance of the Zags from the opening tip was surprising.

Baylor started the game on a 9-0 run. When the score reached 21-6, it marked the largest deficit Gonzaga had faced all season. The game was not even 10 minutes old when the lead grew to 29-10. After the Zags closed to within nine, 58-49, with 14½ minutes left, the Bears mounted a 15-4 run to boost the gap to 20.

“The start of the game was tremendous,” junior guard Jared Butler said after leading Baylor with 22 points and being named most outstanding player of the Final Four. “We didn’t look at the scoreboard. We were just going out there giving it our all. I knew at some point we were up big because I was like, we’re scoring, they aren’t scoring.”

Butler struggled with his shooting through the tournament’s first four games, including a low of nine points against Villanova, making 4 of 14 shots and only one three in nine attempts. But he averaged 19.5 points and 5.5 assists in his two Final Four games, going 12 of 23 from the field and 8 of 14 from three.

For Gonzaga coach Mark Few, it was a difficult way to end a magical season. The Zags, who entered the game leading the nation in scoring at 91.6 points per game, never got their free-flowing offense in gear against a dialed-in defense. Some wondered if the Bulldogs’ buzzer-beating 93-90 overtime victory over UCLA two nights earlier had drained them.

“Obviously, it’s a tough turnaround,” Few said. “It was more just the aggressiveness and the athleticism of Baylor that just had us on our heels. I don’t know that it was due to our fatigue … They were just clearly way more aggressive than us pretty much the entire night. So I don’t think that was because of fatigue, no.”