Guard Malcolm Delaney tries to put one off the glass against Baylor defenders.
The No. 3 seed Baylor Bears scored a road-upset over the second-seeded Virginia Tech Hokies, 84-66, at Cassell Coliseum in the second round of the National Invitational Tournament.
Poor shooting and missed opportunities by the Hokies proved the story of the game, as they finished 23-of-71 from the floor while the Bears hit 61 percent of their attempts.
"That was not a lot of fun," said Tech head coach Seth Greenberg. "Our inability to hit a shot early hurt our ability to defend. The crowd was great. They really came out and supported us, but we kind of let them down."
Seniors A.D. Vassallo and Cheick Diakite received a standing ovation from the Cassell crowd as Greenberg substituted them out with a minute to go.
"I really wanted to leave Tech winning a championship. I wanted to leave my mark," Vassallo said.
Baylor (22-14) built a lead as big as 28 before the Hokies narrowed it to a working deficit.
The highlight for Tech (19-15) came with seven minutes left.
Tech's Malcolm Delaney, who led his team in scoring with 14, made two free-throws after he was fouled going to the hoop, and Baylor's Henry Dugat turned it over on the inbounds pass.
J.T. Thompson responded with a jumper in the lane. Next, Dorenzo Hudson nailed a three from the corner, and Thompson stole the ball and made a layup to cut the lead to 19 with 7:28 to go.
Hudson stole the ball and slammed it on a breakaway as Cassell exploded. After a timeout, Hudson stole the ball again and jammed it home to culminate a 13-0 run.
"I did a poor job slowing us down too much." said Baylor head coach Scott Drew. "I should have kept us aggressive. Credit Virginia Tech, because they got scrappy and forced us to turn the ball over." .
Vassallo nailed both free-throws to close the gap to 65-52 and a Delaney trifecta would chip the lead down to 67-55, but Jerrells responded and never let the Hokies even close to striking distance.
When asked if the 11 a.m. start time had an effect on the Hokies offensively in the first half, Delaney said: "We did this in AAU every day. We had three games a day. The zone really slowed us down a lot. We couldn't get into transition or any easy buckets."
"Our preparation that we had in the Big 12 playing hostile environments... we were prepared for (playing in Cassell) and we knew that we had to come in with a deep focus to beat these guys on their home court," said Baylor senior Kevin Rogers.
Off the inbounds pass, Dugat drained a three to extend the lead to 17, but Vassallo responded with a three of his own and Baylor threw away the inbounds pass to give Tech an outside chance with 3:38 left to go.
Allen got fouled on a drive to the rim, but he missed both of his free-throws and fouled Rogers right away. Rogers made both of his to extend the lead to 16. Next, Delaney missed a three-point shot, but got his own put back and laid it in for the deuce.
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