By Dylan Fink | Sports Writer
After a long season with eyes toward the top of the mountain, the Bears are heading to the NCAA Tournament with an opportunity to bring a national championship back to Waco.
The program has been to the tournament 26 times previously and 19 times under head coach Joey Scrivano. Baylor has yet to come back from the tournament with the coveted champion hardware and is looking for this to be the year.
“We’ve gone very deep before, but we haven’t made it all the way just yet,” Scrivano said. “It’d be cool to get that one done.”
The team is heading to the national tournament following an early exit at the Big 12 tournament, where it fell in the quarterfinals to TCU. The team is also aiming to shake off the memory of last year’s postseason, which ended in a narrow 4-3 first-round loss to Boise State.
The Bears (13-9, 8-5 Big ) will participate in the College Station Regional. They are scheduled to face Wisconsin (17-7, 9-4 Big Ten) in the opening round on Saturday.
If the Bears defeat the Badgers, they will face the winner of regional host Texas A&M and Quinnipiac on Sunday. The winner of the College Station pod advances to the super regionals to face the winner of the Los Angeles Regional.
“When I first came here I told the [athletic director] at the time that I wasn’t worried about conference,” Scrivano said. “I have wanted to win a national championship for a while, and this team does have talent.”
The program holds a 38-26 all-time record in the NCAA Tournament since its debut in 1996. While the earlier rounds are held at campus sites, the final rounds of the championship will be held May 15-17 at Georgia’s Magill Tennis Complex in Athens, Ga.
The Bears will begin their championship chase at 10 a.m. Saturday at the Mitchell Tennis Center in College Station. The match will be streamed here.
