Baylor basketball: Don’t sleep on Bears winning the Big 12

They won’t be the favorite to take the conference championship, but if Kansas should stumble, Baylor basketball could swoop in and win the Big 12 crown.

It’s been a little bit since head coach Scott Drew and the Baylor Bears were winning 38 to 30 games a season and making long runs through the NCAA Tournament wearing some of the most retina-searing uniforms ever seen on a college basketball court. Scott Drew’s team threw it back to a decade ago in the 2016-17 season by advancing to the Sweet 16 but stumbled back last year, due in no small part to an injury to sophomore Tristan Clark.

The Bears were miserable down the stretch, losing their final four conference games, including a swift exit from the Big 12 Tournament, and won only one game in the NIT before being dismissed by Gonzaga. That would seem to portend bad things for the upcoming campaign, but there is plenty of reason for optimism around Waco.

If nothing else, last season showed everyone that the Kansas Jayhawks aren’t unbeatable despite their perennial stockpile of incoming talent. After Kansas State dented that air of invincibility ever so slightly, the rest of the Big 12 should be anxious to see if they can add to it while the maelstrom of an NCAA probe continues to swirl around Bill Self and a few important players are dealing with injuries. Let’s explore why Baylor stepping up as the next team to do it isn’t that far-fetched.

Tristan Clark is back and healthy(-ish)

The 6-foot-9 Clark didn’t just leave a scoring void and rebounding void (he was second on last year’s team in both) when he suffered a knee injury halfway through the 2081-19 season.  His loss transformed the entire way Drew handled his lineup, going smaller with regularity and eventually finding enough of a groove to win 10 of 13 games at one point.

That small ball experience could serve the Bears well in terms of different looks to throw at 2019-20 opponents, but Clark’s return will have more of an impact than many observers might expect. He was leading all of Division I in field goal percentage when he hit the shelf, so is as reliable a scoring threat as they come. Clark has yet to find his ceiling and was named to the first-team All-Big 12 preseason team in anticipation of what it could look like.

Drew is doing his part to ease Clark back into action, utilizing him cautiously during the Bears’ summer exhibitions in Italy and cautioning that it might not be until Baylor hits its conference schedule that we see him at full strength. When he gets there, though, watch out.

Plenty of Bears who stepped up last season return too

Athletes finding new levels to contribute in the absence of a star is a bit of a cliché, but it got that way for a reason. For Baylor, it was primarily in the backcourt where players had a chance to take on increased roles, and most of them are in the mix again ⁠— minus Mario Kegler, who was first suspended from the team and then left the program since the Bears last played.

Senior Devonte Bandoo (39.5 percent from 3-point range in 2018-19) should provide solid outside shooting, while junior Mark Vital (more than seven points and rebounds per game last season) offers a little bit of everything. But it’s sophomore Jared Butler who really shouldered more of the scoring load without Clark, averaging more than 13 points a contest over last season’s second half. There doesn’t figure to be one primary distributor in this group, but a number of options for both scoring and playmaking should be a handful for opponents.

In the frontcourt, Clark will have senior Freddie Gillespie and intriguing sophomore Flo Thamba as sidekicks, so he’s not going it alone there either.

Transfers could help transform the Bears from good to great

If the Bears don’t find enough of what they need from the incumbent guards or end up missing Kegler too much, more potential solutions are on hand in the form of players who were elsewhere last season. The most notable is MaCio Teague, who averages more than 16 points a game while shooting at an impressive clip for UNC-Asheville. Should he adapt to Big 12 play quickly, Baylor could have a dynamic one-two scoring punch with Clark and Teague.

Also arriving from outside Waco is Davion Mitchell from Georgia and Jordan Turner from Kansas. Neither brings in stats worth going gaga over, but they’re expected to at least crack Drew’s rotation and help make the Bears deeper and more flexible than last year’s group.

The schedule should be a perfect measuring stick

Should the Bears need to work out the kinks before Big 12 play, they figure to have just enough opportunities to do so. The second game of the season is against Pac-12 champion Washington in the Armed Forces Classic, and Baylor will also play in the Myrtle Beach Invitational, which could lead to a showdown against Villanova. In December, there’s a non-conference tilt with Arizona that should tell us a lot about both teams.

Once the conference schedule tips off in earnest, the Bears won’t have to wait long before facing Texas Tech and Kansas. Should expectations be too high for a team ESPN thinks is the number one contender to Kansas’ assumed supremacy, everyone will realize it by mid-January.

The best-case scenario is …

Clark regains both his form and his confidence quickly, resuming right where he left off and bumping up both his scoring and rebounding. Teague finds his play transfers smoothly to the Big 12, and Drew is able to mix and match guards around him to create a series of headaches for everyone Baylor plays.

Meanwhile, the off-court noise proves a distraction for Self and the Jayhawks, who also go big stretches of time without Devon Dotson and Udoka Azubuike. That makes Kansas vulnerable enough to slip to second in the Big 12 and it’s Baylor who takes advantage this time. The momentum from a conference title carries over into March, and we’re all treated to neon green or yellow or whatever Nike cooks up for the Bears for multiple weekends of the NCAA Tournament.

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