Acy leads way as Baylor moves into Elite Eight

By Jay Busbee,

ATLANTA – It took exactly 55 seconds for Xavier coach Chris Mack to realize his team was in serious trouble.

Quincy Acy, the bearded heart and soul of Baylor and part of its much-maligned frontcourt, found daylight at the top of the key and buried a head-on jumper.

Quincy Acy's 20 points and 15 boards carried Baylor into the South Region final against Kentucky.
(Getty Images)
“He’s not supposed to do that!” Mack said on the sideline. “Seventeen feet? He’s not supposed to do that.”

But he did. Acy also threw down crowd-rousing jams, reeled in both offensive and defensive rebounds that kept Xavier at a (mostly) comfortable distance in the rear-view mirror, covered for yet another Perry Jones III vanishing act, and singlehandedly willed his third-seeded team into the Elite Eight with a 75-70 victory over the 10th-seeded Musketeers.

“He was a beast,” said Brady Heslip, Acy’s roommate and a starting guard. “He was telling me all week that he wanted to play better because he knew he hadn’t been carrying his weight. He sure did tonight.”

Acy finished with 20 points and 15 rebounds on 8-of-11 shooting. And even that doesn’t tell the entire story of how he dominated Xavier on both ends of the floor.

“He’s a cage-rattler,” Mack said. “I want to see his birth certificate. He’s that kid, when you’re coaching AAU and you look over and he just looks so much bigger and stronger than everybody. … I can take some of the offensive rebound putbacks, but when he starts facing up and hitting jump shots, it’s not what the doctor ordered. It’s not fair.”

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