Baylor heard all the pundits clamoring for one more Kansas-Missouri matchup, this time in the Big 12 tournament title game. It didn’t matter that those teams needed to win in the semifinals. The tantalizing rematch seemed to be fate.

“You never want to get disrespected,” the Bears’ Quincy Acy said, “so we came in with the mindset this week to win every game.”

They’re 2 for 2 so far.

Sharpshooter Brady Heslip hit a pair of 3-pointers to keep No. 3 Kansas at bay, and Perry Jones III finished with 18 points in an 81-72 upset of the Jayhawks on Friday night.

It will be the 12th-ranked Bears who will face No. 5 Missouri or Texas for their first championship.

“This was a night we grew up,” Baylor coach Scott Drew said.

Quincy Miller added 13 points and eight rebounds, and Pierre Jackson had 11 points and seven assists for the Bears (27-6), who lost to the Tigers in their only previous Big 12 title game.

“We were just more focused, and we’re playing as a team,” Jackson said. “Once we’re all clicking like that, we’re hard to beat. We know what time of year it is.”

Tyshawn Taylor had 20 points for Kansas (26-6), which used a big second-half charge to briefly take the lead. But the Bears hung tough down the stretch, and Heslip’s two 3-pointers — one with 2:03 remaining, the other with 1:12 left — allowed them to hang on.

No team from Texas has ever won the Big 12 tournament.

Baylor will get another chance.

“They beat us. Make no mistake about that,” Kansas coach Bill Self said.

The last time the Jayhawks lost to Baylor was in the quarterfinals of the 2009 conference tournament, when they were also the top seed. Now they’ll spend the rest of the weekend waiting for their seeding in the NCAA tournament, where many expected them to receive a No. 1 spot.

Thomas Robinson finished with 15 points and nine rebounds for Kansas. Elijah Johnson added 15 points but was 1 of 6 from beyond the arc, while Jeff Withey added 11 points.

“The thing that was most disappointing to me is we played a style that is just good enough to get your butt beat,” Self said. “Average energy, we let them pass wherever they want to, we never dictated defensively, crappy traps on the post, not paying attention to the scouting report.”

That about covers it.

Baylor took a 15-8 in the opening minutes and, with the exception of a couple flurries by the Jayhawks, managed to hold the advantage all the way to halftime.

Jones looked as if he never left the Sprint Center after his epic 31-point outing against Kansas State in the quarterfinals. He had 10 points and five boards by halftime, once going way up for an alley-oop jam off a pass from Jackson that seemed headed for the cheap seats.

“They’re a great team,” Jones said. “When they get on runs it’s hard to stop them. Just trying to get rebounds and defend against second-chance points.”

The Jayhawks trailed 43-35 when the teams hit the locker room, and they were fortunate it was that close. Robinson, the Big 12 player of the year, was held to five points and one rebound in 13 minutes, forced to spend the final five on the bench because of foul trouble.

The Bears kept building on the lead in the second half, going ahead 53-40 on Acy’s basket with 16:32 left. Little did they know it would be their last one for a while.

Taylor started the Jayhawks on an 18-3 push with an easy basket, and after Acy blew a dunk, Robinson scored underneath. Kansas started to get into transition, where it’s at its best, and Taylor eventually rattled in another 3 to get the Jayhawks within one with 12:52 to go.

The senior guard shrugged his shoulders on his way back to defense, the Sprint Center coming alive with the crowd heavily favoring the school about a 30-minute drive from Kansas City.

“We started playing how we played,” Taylor said. “We started defending a little bit.”

Withey’s three-point play and a basket by Robinson gave Kansas a 58-56 lead, its first since midway through the first half, but it wound up being short-lived.

Baylor scored the next nine points, four of them coming on Jones’ first buckets of the second half, and still led 65-60 on a pair of foul shots by A.J. Walton with 6:08 left.

Taylor and Robinson managed to get to the foul line for Kansas, but Heslip’s 3-pointer with 2:03 left gave Baylor a 70-64 advantage, and his next 3 with 1:12 go made it 73-66.

Except for a small contingent of Baylor fans, the arena was quiet the rest of the way.

“Very pleased with our guys from the standpoint we’ve been successful against Kansas before in spurts, and then they’d have a spurt and we couldn’t answer the run,” Drew said. “When they made a run tonight, I was really pleased with the character of our guys.”

— Associated Press —

When Elijah Johnson headed home over the weekend for the funeral of an uncle, the junior guard for No. 3 Kansas had steeled himself to support his family through a difficult time.

It seemed all anybody wanted to talk to him about was basketball.

“Everybody was supposed to be sad,” Johnson said. “I just realized where I’m at. It’s another reality check. I think that played into me. I couldn’t wait to get back to school.”

He couldn’t wait for the Big 12 tournament, either.

Johnson hit five 3-pointers and scored a career-high 26 points Thursday, complementing yet another strong performance by Thomas Robinson and helping the Jayhawks to an 83-66 rout of Texas A&M as they pursue a third straight tournament title.

“I just needed to get a little love from my family, honestly,” Johnson said. “When I went home for a little bit, I think it just gave me a little something going into March.”

Robinson finished with 19 points and 10 rebounds, and all-Big 12 guard Tyshawn Taylor added 16 points for Kansas (27-5), which will play Baylor (No. 11 ESPN/USA Today, No. 12 AP) on Friday.

The Bears advanced to the semifinals with an 82-74 victory over Kansas State.

“They’re so talented, it’s a joke,” said coach Bill Self, whose team knocked off the Bears in both their regular-season games. “It’ll be an interesting next 24 hours to get ready.”

Texas A&M (14-18) showed glimpses of what could have been had the Aggies had their full measure of players this season. Injuries derailed a season that began with massive expectations and ended with a whimper in the quarterfinals of the Big 12 tournament.

Khris Middleton finished with 24 points for the Aggies, but he didn’t get a whole lot of help. Leading scorer Elston Turner was held to eight points on 3-of-11 shooting.

“I’ve been here for three years and never lost this many games,” Middleton said.

The Aggies, who beat Oklahoma in the opening round, simply couldn’t contain Johnson, who also knocked down a couple 3s just after whistles that didn’t count.

The sharpshooter set his previous career high of 23 points early in the year against UCLA, before spending several months struggling with his shot.

“Those are the shots that he usually takes; those are the shots that he practices every day,” Taylor said. “He just hit them today.”

The Jayhawks have won nine straight overall, including a thrilling overtime victory against Missouri. They improved to 15-1 in their opening game at the Big 12 tournament, and are 14-2 in quarterfinal match-ups, their last loss coming to Baylor in the 2009 quarterfinals.

The same team they’ll face Friday night.

“All I know is we play Baylor tomorrow,” Robinson said. “That’s about it.”

Early on, it didn’t look like things would be nearly so easy for top-seeded Kansas against the No. 9 seed Aggies, who were coming off a victory about 16 hours earlier.

Texas A&M clamped down on Robinson in the post and flustered Taylor in the backcourt while inching out to an early advantage. Middleton provided the offense for the Aggies, scoring 14 of his points in the first half as Texas A&M established a 21-17 lead.

Middleton’s basket with 8:48 left wound up being the high point for the Aggies.

Robinson got on track with a basket inside to start the Jayhawks on a 13-0 run, ultimately giving them the lead for good. Johnson knocked down a pair of 3s during the spurt, and Taylor’s signature floater in the lane with 4:19 left gave Kansas a 30-21 advantage.

Middleton stemmed the tide with a three-point play, but it was only a speed bump for the Jayhawks, who pushed the lead to 38-24 on Taylor’s back-to-back 3-pointers.

They scored on 10 of their first 11 possessions of the second half to put the game away.

Johnson started the clinching run with a jumper in the opening seconds, and after Withey made one of two free throws, Robinson knocked down a 3 from the top of the key — the bruising forward improved his career mark to 5 of 12 from beyond the arc.

The lead eventually swelled to more than 20 when Robinson made the first of two free throws, stole the ball after missing the second, and made one of two on his next trip to the line.

Robinson even knocked down another 3 with 5:04 remaining, the first time in his three-year career at Kansas that he’s made more than one in a game.

Kansas cruised the final 12 minutes to a comfortable win.

“They demand so much help with Thomas Robinson and Jeff Withey that we left some guys open on the perimeter, and when they make 10 3s and Robinson hits two 3s, they’re a very difficult team to beat for anybody,” Aggies coach Billy Kennedy said. “Kansas was very good today.”

The Jayhawks, who met Texas A&M in the semifinals two of the past four years, improved to 20-1 against the Aggies in the final meeting as members of the same league.

The Aggies head off to the Southeastern Conference beginning next season.

“You kind of reap what you sow,” Kennedy said. “We had some definition at the end of the season we didn’t have three or four weeks ago, or a month and a half ago.”

— Associated Press —