Heading into Sunday’s NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament Selection Show, prognosticators across the country predicted that Greenfield native Makai Mason and his Baylor University men’s basketball team were squarely in the field of 68 teams.
Even the Baylor players had to be feeling pretty good when they woke up on Sunday. Baylor put together a 19-13 record during the season, including a 10-8 mark in the Big 12 Conference, good enough for fourth place in the 10-team conference. Like the rest of America, the players and teams learn of their tourney fate when the brackets are announced on CBS at 6 p.m. Teams sit around and celebrate when their name is announced, or commiserate together when the show ends and their team has not been announced. For any teams on the “bubble,” it can make for some anxious moments.
While Baylor may have seemingly been on firm ground entering Sunday’s Selection Show, some doubt certainly had to be creeping into the minds of the players and coaches as teams were announced for the first three regions of the bracket without Baylor being called. The West bracket was the final to be announced and finally, with just 13 spots remaining, Baylor was announced as a ninth seed and will face eighth-seeded Syracuse in a first round game Thursday night at 9:57. Mason said that there was a bit of nervousness in the room as the bracket filled without hearing the Baylor name announced.
“It was kind of like a funny nervousness,” he said Sunday night, hours after the announcement. “Everybody was kind of looking at each other like, ‘C’mon, now.’”
Mason said that he agreed with his Bears earning a ninth seed. At one point just a couple weeks back, Baylor appeared poised to grab a slightly higher draw, but the team stumbled down the stretch a bit, losing its final four games of the season. That included its Big 12 Tournament quarterfinal game to eventual champion Iowa State.
“I think the ninth seed was about what we expected,” he said. “Not finishing the season off that strong, I thought it was a pretty fair seeding.”
This season marks the second and final time he will get an opportunity to compete in the March Madness Tournament. The senior point guard got his first opportunity to play in the NCAA Tournament three years ago when he was a sophomore at Yale and the Bulldogs won the Ivy League to qualify. He helped the Bulldogs to their first-ever victory in the tournament with an upset over Baylor before being eliminated by Duke in the second round. The next two seasons were marred by foot injuries for Mason, and he graduated from Yale last spring having played only a handful of minutes for the Bulldogs over his final two seasons.
Mason was granted an extra year of eligibility due to his injuries, but Ivy League schools do not allow players to redshirt, so Mason was forced to transfer. He landed at Baylor and now, in his final year of collegiate eligibility, is getting one final shot to play in the Big Dance.
“It’s definitely pretty special,” Mason said. “Not being able to go the last two years, and just the long journey with the foot, and this year with the team being picked ninth in the league and all the injuries during the year, it’s pretty special for sure.”
As Mason said, Baylor was not even supposed to be in this position if you believe the preseason predictions that picked the Bears to finish ninth in the 10-team Big 12. Mason said that the poor outlook helped fuel the team and it seemed appropriate that after being picked to finish ninth in the conference, Baylor instead went out and earned a ninth seed in the tournament.
“No one really picked us to finish in the top half of the league at all and that was definitely something we circled on the board,” he said. “We wanted to prove people wrong.”
Baylor opened the season with a disappointing loss to Texas Southern but rebounded to play well enough in non-conference play to start turning some heads, going 9-4 as it headed into Big 12 play. After opening conference play 1-2, Baylor went on a six-game winning streak, including a win over eighth-ranked Texas Tech. Mason helped lead the team this season, scoring 14.6 points per game to tie Tristan Clark for the team lead, as well as finishing second on the team in assists with 85. He did all that despite missing some time both at the beginning of the year and late in the season with a foot injury once again. Mason has played sparingly down the stretch for Baylor due to his injury, but he said that he is ready to go for the tournament.
“I’m feeling decent,” Mason said. “It’s not going to get better. I’m just trying to manage it and learn to play with it.”
Baylor will need Mason to be at his best if it is going to get past Syracuse, which has already defeated top-seeded Duke this season in Durham. The Orange, who are led by Hall of Fame coach Jim Boeheim, went 20-13 in the season, and 10-8 in the ACC, which left them seventh in the 15-team conference. Syracuse is known for its defense, particularly the 2-3 zone that Boeheim has run for decades and helped him win one NCAA title (2003) and make many other deep tournament runs, including last year’s Sweet 16 appearance.
“It’s going to be a good test for sure,” Mason said. “They’re a very good team with a great coach. We are watching a lot of film on their zone and how to attack it. It will be nice to match up with a team with so much prestige.”
Mason is one of the few players on his team with any tournament experience and he said that it’s important for the players to remember that it’s just another game. Mason did just that three years ago when he scored a game-high 31 points to lead 12th-seeded Yale past fifth-seeded Baylor in that memorable first-round upset.
“I will tell them to just stay in the moment,” Mason said. “The lights and stage and the media can be pretty big. Just focus on each possession, because each possession matters in the tournament. Every game is going to be pretty tight.”
Do that, and perhaps Mason will be playing in the second round on Saturday.