‘Feed that man the ball.’ TCU stuns No. 2 Baylor behind Bane’s red-hot shooting
With just over three minutes left in the game, TCU’s Desmond Bane knew history would be made. He knew No. 2 Baylor would be going down in Fort Worth.
Bane had just made the play of the game, draining a deep 3-pointer over Baylor forward Freddie Gillespie with 3 minutes, 3 seconds left in the game.
Bane made a hard move to his right, appearing as though he’d be driving to the lane. The 6-foot-9 Gillespie bit and got turned around as Bane stepped back and knocked down his fifth straight 3-pointer from close to 26 feet.
“After I hit that,” Bane said, “I knew we were going to bring it home.”
That shot gave TCU a 63-55 lead, and as Bane predicted, the Horned Frogs stayed in front the rest of the way for a shocking 75-72 victory on Saturday afternoon at Schollmaier Arena.
Students stormed the court afterward to celebrate TCU’s biggest upset in program history in Fort Worth.
The Frogs defeated No. 1 Kansas in the 2017 Big 12 tournament, but the highest-ranked team they’d defeated in Fort Worth was No. 7 West Virginia in the 2017-18 season.
This also becomes the first season in which TCU has defeated three ranked teams. It knocked off then-No. 18 Texas Tech last month and then-No. 17 West Virginia last week.
Bane finished with 23 points, including 19 of the Frogs’ 54 points in the second half. He went 5 for 5 from long range in the final half. Freshman PJ Fuller had a career day, too, with 21 points, and Jaire Grayer added 13 points.
The day belonged to Bane, who had five rebounds and four assists to go along with his points.
As Grayer explained of the team’s second half mindset in regards to Bane, “Feed him the rock. Feed that man the ball.”
Baylor coach Scott Drew even joked that he’s happy Bane is a senior. After all, the Bears don’t want to have to design a game plan to try and contain Bane again.
“I love cheering for him when we’re not playing him,” Drew said. “He’s a hard worker and a great kid, and he deserves all the success he’s had. I’m glad we’ll be seeing him play in a different league next year, hopefully the NBA.
“He’s a monster.”
A “monster” that might’ve cost Baylor (25-3, 14-2 Big 12) a chance at winning its first regular-season conference championship since 1950. The Bears, who set a Big 12 record with a 23-game winning streak that was snapped in a loss to Kansas on Feb. 22, are no longer in the driver’s seat.
Kansas (26-3, 15-1) now controls its destiny to an outright championship going into the final week of the regular season.
TCU (16-13, 7-9 Big 12), meanwhile, was reeling coming into the game, losing eight of its last 10. That stretch included a 68-52 loss to Baylor on Feb. 1 in Waco.
The Frogs were without their top two point guard options, too, with RJ Nembhard (groin) and Francisco Farabello (concussion) sidelined.
But TCU coach Jamie Dixon downplayed the magnitude of this victory for the program.
“I told our guys we’re supposed to win,” Dixon said. “We’ve already done it. You’re supposed to win your home games and you’re supposed to beat ranked teams at home if we’re going to be the program we say we’re going to be. That was the message to our guys.”
Things didn’t get off to a promising start for TCU. The Frogs trailed 28-21 at halftime, enduring a 10-minute, 41-second stretch in the first half in which they made just one field goal.
But the Horned Frogs turned it on in the second half, scoring 54 points by shooting a blistering 76.2% from the field.
“Why do we score 54 in the second half and 21 in the first?” Dixon said. “We spread it out. We space it a little bit more. We told them to drive it and then give it to Desmond. That was pretty much the coaching that was going on there. But Desmond was tremendous.”
Baylor had no answer for Bane. He made all five of his 3-pointers in a nine-minute stretch in the second half.
He pulled TCU to within 44-40 with a 3 at the 12:03 mark and then cut it to 54-53 with 6:44 left. Bane broke a 55-55 tie with his fourth 3-pointer at the 4:42 mark before making the highlight-reel play against Gillespie with 3:03 left.
“The last shot he hit was ridiculous, but we’ll take it,” Dixon said. “It’s interesting. I thought he passed up a few jump shots early. He’s driving a lot, which we want him to do, but we don’t want him to pass up open 3s on the catch. I thought he passed up a couple of them, but they switched out some bigs on him. He just stepped out a little farther out and knocked it down.”
Added Bane: “I was extremely comfortable. I was just feeding off my teammates and the crowd. They make it easy with their support from all angles.”
Spurred by Bane’s 3-point barrage and an 18-1 run, TCU built a 68-55 lead with 1:19 left. But the Frogs almost blew the seemingly safe 13-point lead.
Baylor made it a one-possession game late. Bane had a costly turnover, leading to a 3-pointer by Bears guard MaCio Teague that made it 71-68 with 22 seconds left.
TCU answered with a fastbreak dunk by Fuller, and Diante Smith sealed the game with two free throws with seven seconds left. Still, it got a little too close for comfort at the end.
“We haven’t been in a lot of situations like that. We’ve got to handle it a little better,” Dixon said. “We lost some aggressiveness but at the same time we were pretty aggressive offensively. I thought we did a good job.”
TCU will now try to carry the momentum on the road when it faces No. 1 Kansas on Wednesday in Lawrence.
This story was originally published February 29, 2020 at 3:15 PM.
