Fansided

Can Baylor unseat Kansas atop the Big 12?

By Charlie Maikis

Feb 20, 2016; Austin, TX, USA; Baylor Bears forward Jonathan Motley (5) dunks against the Texas Longhorns during the second half at the Frank Erwin Special Events Center. Baylor won 78-64. Mandatory Credit: Brendan Maloney-USA TODAY Sports
Feb 20, 2016; Austin, TX, USA; Baylor Bears forward Jonathan Motley (5) dunks against the Texas Longhorns during the second half at the Frank Erwin Special Events Center. Baylor won 78-64. Mandatory Credit: Brendan Maloney-USA TODAY Sports /
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Can the Baylor Bears end the decade of dominance by the Kansas Jayhawks and take the Big 12?

By taking down Iowa State on Wednesday, No. 2 Baylor moved to 14-0 on the season, the second-best start in school history. The only one better was a 17-0 start in 2011-12 that saw the team finish by winning 30 games and making the Elite Eight. With AP No. 1 Villanova’s loss to Butler earlier in the night, it seemed like a win would put them in the driver’s seat to be the top team in the land when the next poll is released on Monday. It seems safe to say, then, that Baylor is doing a good job of setting themselves up for a successful season.

Unfortunately, Baylor plays in the Big 12, notoriously one of the best basketball conferences in the nation. Not only that, but the Big 12 has been dominated thoroughly by Kansas, a team that has won at least a share of the conference’s regular-season title for 12 years running. And unfortunately for Baylor, this season appears no different. Kansas is 13-1 and slotted just one spot behind the Bears in the latest AP Poll at No. 3. For Baylor to continue what has been a magical season thus far, they will probably have to go through Kansas, something that few teams manage to do.

Baylor is a team that’s not built on star power like blue-blooded Kansas. Their roster has zero former McDonald’s All-Americans. Kansas has four (though luckily for Baylor, Mississippi State transfer Malik Newman has to sit out this year due to transfer rules). The Bears have four players who were rated in the top 100 of their recruiting class by the Recruiting Services Consensus Index, with their highest-ranked player being Ishmail Wainwright at 58. Kansas has seven, led by 2016 No. 1 Josh Jackson. (Baylor strikes luck again as 2016 No. 33 Udoka Azubuike is out for the season with an injury. Even better, most of Kansas’s top recruits from past classes have matriculated to the NBA).

Instead of relying on high school stars, Baylor’s best players are either homegrown and developed, like redshirt junior star Johnathan Motley, or transfers, like Manu Lecomte and Jo Lual-Acuil Jr. None of their guys carried the fanfare of Jackson or Devonte’ Graham out of high school, but they are making a meaningful impact by leaning on their development and playing together.

Their biggest contributor this season has been Motley. The breakout big man is averaging 16 points and 9.3 rebounds per contest and has played his way into the thick of the Wooden Award conversation after being one of the biggest preseason snubs. After not being a top 100 recruit out of high school, he started his career with a redshirt year during which he gained experience practicing against elite competition like Isaiah Austin, Rico Gathers and Cory Jefferson. Over the next two years, he started 43 of a possible 68 games, but only averaged about 21 minutes per game. Stepping in as a full-time starter this year and playing nearly 30 minutes per night, he has exploded on the scene and made Baylor into a force few saw coming.

While Motley combines with former Miami Hurricane Manu Lecomte, who hit the Bears’ game-winner against Iowa State, to form a formidable duo, there is little question that the talent on their roster pales in comparison to that of the Jayhawks. Talent isn’t everything, however, as college basketball is played by 18-22-year-olds, some of the most volatile people on the planet.

Baylor coach Scott Drew has done a good job with the team since taking the reins in 2003. He has brought the Bears to six NCAA Tournaments and two NITs in his 13 years, including to the Elite Eight in 2009-10 and 2011-12 and a NIT Championship in 2012-13. In large part, because he has yet to deliver a conference championship, he pales in comparison to his counterpart. The Jayhawks’ Bill Self also took over his program in 2003 and has won at least a share of the Big 12 regular season title in every year since his first with the team, when he led them to a tie for second. He has coached six conference tournament champions and led his team to the National Title game in 2007-08 and 2011-12, winning in ’08. For Drew to unseat Self at the top would be a coup, but he appears to be poised to have that chance at for the first time.

The two coaches will clash twice in the span of a few weeks in February, and the outcomes of those games could very well determine who is crowned the champion. Potentially being No. 1 is a great step for Drew and the Bears, but they could stand to learn from Oklahoma’s season last year. The Sooners reached No. 1 in the AP Poll for three consecutive weeks in January and February, but dropped both of their games with Self’s Jayhawks and finished third in the conference standings. Those two games, on February 1 and 18, will be crucial to Baylor’s season as both the regular season and conference tournament will run through Kansas as they have for more than a decade.

Don’t count out Motley, Drew, and company yet, however. They were unranked in the preseason poll and didn’t make an appearance until Week 3. They jumped into the top 10 the very next week and were in the top five the week after that. Kansas, meanwhile, was the No. 3 team in the preseason and has dropped no lower than No. 7 this season. Such a meteoric rise is reflective of the Bears’ stellar resume, as they had wins over three top-10 teams by the first week of December. No other team, not even Kansas, has beaten such an impressive host of teams without dropping a game, as Gonzaga is the only other unbeaten team remaining. The Zags only ranked wins are against a shorthanded Arizona squad and the Iowa State team Baylor dispatched this week. Nobody expected the Bears to escape such a brutal non-conference schedule unscathed, so shattering the expectation of falling behind Kansas in conference play will be nothing new.

The disrespect didn’t end with the preseason. As of the last time, it was announced, Baylor wasn’t even first in their own conference in ESPN’s Basketball Power Index, a forward-looking metric to project future strength. The top overall spot in the country went to West Virginia. That release was on January 2, and Baylor was down at 13, way behind the Mountaineers and seven spots behind Kansas. Similar to how they proved everyone wrong in bulldozing the likes of Oregon, Michigan State, Louisville, and Xavier, Drew and his team will have to show that they can keep up the high level of play as the winter wears on. They will have a good shot to silence the haters yet again as they play the BPI top-rated West Virginia squad on the road Tuesday. A win over another top-10 team, this time in conference play, would give them a leg up and a lot of confidence that they can take down Kansas.

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If Baylor is able to supplant Kansas atop the Big 12 standings, it would be one of the stories of the season. For such an unheralded team to do something no other team has done in over a decade would be a massive shake-up in the world of college basketball. While all signs point to Kansas having the advantage, being an underdog is nothing new to Drew’s team. The experience they gained taking down some of the top teams in the country before their rise to the top should help them when they square off against the Jayhawks as an underdog on the biggest stage. While they still have a long way to go, seeing that number one next to their name will be a great start for a team expected to do so little.