After three straight early exits in March people have forgotten about Scott Drew & Baylor. They might regret that this year.
by Jordan Beckley
There aren’t many examples that are as shocking and gruesome of a knockout punch like the one that Baylor threw at undefeated Gonzaga in the 2021 National Championship game.
Gonzaga came into the game 31-0, overflowing with studs like Drew Timme, Jalen Suggs, Corey Kispert, Joel Ayayi and Andrew Nembhard. Those stars played like it boasting the country’s no. 1 offense in points per game and in adjusted offensive efficiency according to KenPom. A freight train.
Baylor was the often forgotten no.2 team. The Bears didn’t have a perfect record having lost to Kansas at Allen Fieldhouse and a loss to the Cade Cunningham-lead Oklahoma State team in the Big 12 tournament. The Bears were vulnerable compared to the Zags who were like heavyweight champion Mike Tyson.
But even Mike Tyson lost fights.
Baylor came out and outmuscled Gonzaga. The Bears ferocious guard trio of Jared Butler, MaCio Teague and Davion Mitchell came out snarling and snuffed out the no.1 offense. The lauded Gonzaga offense scored just 8 points in the first 7 minutes to Baylor’s 23. If you’re a fan of multiplying out what that would look like across an entire 40 minute game like I am… Baylor was on pace to win 131 to 45.
It was a uppercut to the chin that the Bulldogs never recovered from. They trailed by double digits essentially the entire game and what was supposed to be one of the best College Basketball Title games we’ve ever seen turned out to be Round 1 TKO.
It was a statement by Scott Drew that Baylor had officially been redeemed. The program that Drew had worked so diligently to quite literally build up from square one had finished it’s hero’s journey and become the Champs.
The Title brought validation to the winning culture he cultivated over a dozen 20+ win seasons. Drew had the misfortune of being in the same conference as Bill Self & Kansas and so Baylor didn’t have the Big 12 Title hardware that a program of their winning percentage would have earned in other conferences. The Bears and Drew up to that point also suffered the same Tournament misfortune so many top coaches have and hadn’t earned National validity from making the Final Four yet.
But the 2021 National Title was a definitive moment for Drew to be able to say, “I’m here and I’m the best.” It’s a sentiment that Baylor fans hope Drew can remind the world of next season.
Big 12: Bigger & Badder
Baylor has been eliminated in the Round of 32 in all three of the seasons following their 2021 National Title. Despite winning 74 games in that span, Baylor has taken a step back from the inner circle of contenders. Despite being ranked in almost every single AP Poll in that span, it’s easy to see how the court of public opinion could have forgotten about Baylor.
Yet, the Bears have been right there at the cusp of something special happening again. A plethora of changes have come to Waco since then too. Baylor’s athletic department cut the ribbon on a brand new Basketball complex in Foster Pavilion (they’ve promised the camera angle on television will be fixed this year). Drew has leveled up in recruiting landing 6 of Baylor’s 10 best recruits in modern ranking era in the four classes since the Title. And perhaps the most influential change is that the Big 12 is getting bigger.
Conference realignment from Football has brought sweeping changes to College athletics but one aspect that didn’t change is that the Big 12 has only gotten tougher as the best College Basketball league. What already was a juggernaut has become a Thanos-esque collection of infinity stones.
Baylor & Kansas have both won National Titles this decade for the conference. Last year, Kelvin Samspon & the Houston Cougars joined the jungle winning the Big 12 regular season Title in their first year in the league. Houston has been dominant recently too earning no.1 seeds the past two tournaments, earning an Elite Eight bid the year before that and of course the year before that losing in the Final Four in 2021 to Scott Drew & Baylor.
Now, Utah, Arizona State, Colorado and most notably Tommy Lloyd & Arizona will join the Big 12 this coming season. The Wildcats of Tuscon have been one of the 8 best programs in the past three years since Lloyd took over amassing 88 wins, winning two regular season PAC-12 Titles, two PAC-12 Tournament Titles and obtaining a no.1 or no.2 seed in all three NCAA tournaments.
Joining the scrum of top teams in the Big 12 next season will be Iowa State who brings back most of their 2nd-place-finishing & no.2 seed team from last season, Jerome Tang with a loaded transfer class at Kansas State, a sneaky good Cincinnati team under Wes Miller, Grant McCasland in year two at Texas Tech, Darian DeVries & his son Tucker taking over at West Virginia, & many more coaches and programs that make it the deepest league in the country.
Amidst all these jockeying Kentucky Derby level horses it’s easy to lose Baylor who seems to be a Show bet rather than a Win bet in recent history. But where exactly has it gone wrong for Baylor? Why aren’t they making the Final Four every year? Is something wrong with the Bears if Scott Drew doesn’t win a National Title this year? No. But let’s dig into the reasons behind these dumb questions.
What’s gone wrong?
The 2021-22 season was actually a wildly successful one for Baylor and Drew.
Despite losing four starters from the National Championship team, the Bears went 26-5 in the regular season and shared the Big 12 Regular Season Title with Kansas. Coach Drew had built a real title contender in quick succession partly due to hitting it big with two freshmen.
Kendall Brown & Jeremy Sochan were 5 and 4-Star recruits respectively who were both 6’8″, long and coordinated. Brown started all 34 games and Sochan came off the bench but both played 25+ minutes a game and they rounded out a switchy frontline that was a fearsome defense again (no. 13 on KenPom).
Offensively, James Akinjo, Adam Flagler and LJ Cryer (when he was healthy) grabbed control in the backcourt each averaging about a baker’s dozen a game. But the offense was super balanced as the frontline rotation of Sochan, Brown, Jonathan Tchamwa Tchatchoua and Matthew Mayer each pouring just under 10 points a game too. That balance lead them to be the no. 8 KenPom offense in efficiency despite not being elite at 2pt%, 3pt% or going to the free throw line that often.
Baylor was great at offense and defense and while the Freshmen were super productive, Drew didn’t have to rely on them too much for offense. So, what went wrong? Tournament luck partially tore down Baylor’s repeat quest.
The Bears earned a no.1 seed despite an early exit from the Big 12 Tournament, but unfortunately for them they would have to play a supremely talented North Carolina team who underachieved all year on their way to an no. 8 seed.
The Tar Heels came out hot. RJ Davis was nailing shots, Brady Manek was a maniac and UNC built up a double digit lead all 1st half. By halfway thru the 2nd half the lead had swelled to 25 points with UNC up 67-42. Baylor and Scott Drew didn’t give up and mounted a frenzied comeback fueled by a full court press that is not traditionally apart of the Bears’ gameplan.
The pace was frenetic, Manek got ejected, Caleb Love fouled out and somehow Baylor scraped all the way back to force overtime. However, in the extra time Armando Bacot and the rest of the Tar Heels outlasted Baylor and bounced the no.1 seed.
So, Baylor lost an All-time tournament game IN Overtime to a team who went on to eliminate UCLA and Duke and barely lost to Kansas in the National Title game. Forgivable.
The 2021-22 Baylor team was a good team by metrics and record just had bad tournament luck. The next two years exposed more potential fatal flaws.
Two things have stuck out to me as red flags for the past two seasons: poor defense and over-reliance on a Freshman.
During the 2019-2022 stretch, all three Baylor teams gave up just about 60-65ppg ranking in the top 40 scoring defenses each season (and as high as no.5 in ’19-20) while finishing 4th, 22nd, & 17th in adjusted defensive efficiency via KenPom.
The past two seasons the Bears’ opponents point total balloned up to 70+ points a game putting them firmly middle of the pack (186th in ’21-22, 150th in ’22-23) as a scoring defense. The KenPom rankings climbed the charts up to 107th & 72nd too. Now, you can be a good team with a mid-defense, but we have extensive data that you can’t win a National Title like that unless you have Kemba Walker on your team.
Baylor stopped forcing as many turnovers with steals per game dropping by nearly a third going from 9 a game on the Title team to 6.6-6.7spg last two seasons. Scott Drew hasn’t really had a rim protecting big in a long time and that hurt more once the no-middle defense was definitely giving up middle driving lanes. Baylor’s opponents 2pt field goal % went from 48-49% (middle of the pack) in ’20-21 & ’21-22 to 52-53% (bottom of the barrel in the country) the past two years.
You can see the fine margins of College Basketball in action. Just a little more hustle to stay in front of your man, faster hands, longer limbs, etc. can change the shooting percentage by 3%. It doesn’t seem like much, but that multiplied by 35 attempts over 35+ games can plummet your defense and change seasons.
The other issue has been an over-reliance on Freshmen.
I mentioned earlier that Drew has brought in 6 of Baylor’s Top 10 recruits according to 247sports in the seasons since the 2021 Title. Well, two of the top 5 All-Time were Keyonte George & Ja’Kobe Walter.
George & Walter are the type of 5-Star recruits every fanbase fawns over and wishes their program could land. To be able to land them, you don’t really get to say no. They’re going to start, they’re going to play 25+ minutes a game, and they’re going to shoot 10+ times a game or they aren’t going to commit.
Luckily, both of those guys have been big hits. Both players were essentially the leading scorers in each season, both won the Big 12 Rookie of the Year, and both were Top-20 NBA picks. Plenty of 5-Stars every year are big dissappointments. Yet, they were both still Freshmen and without having gone through the same massive number of reps as upperclassmen are prone to mistakes.
Keyonte George was inefficent. He shot a middling 33.8% from 3 on nearly 7 attempts a game. He was poor inside the arc too shooting just 42.4% from 2 good for 37.6 FG% on a team leading 12.5att per game. As a freshman he turned the ball over a little more than he assisted a teammate at 95 TOs to 91 assists on the year and his advanced numbers were good not great leaving you wanting a little more.
Ja’Kobe Walter just didn’t pass. He had a strong usage rate of 23.4% and a dismal assist rate of 8.1% leading to 1.4 assists per game. For more context, Walter attempted 383 shots last year and had just 50 assists. Braden Smith of Purdue, granted he is one of the best passers in the country, had 392 attempts this past season and had 292 assists. Basically 6x as many assists as Walter. You might think that is an unfair comparison but on similar minutes per game, Smith posted those numbers on 3% lower usage rate. In addition, Walter had similar inefficient numbers to George at 37.6 overall field goal % (42.3 2pt% / 34.1 3pt% on 6.1att) on a team leading 10.9 shots a contest.
Both George & Walter were meh defenders too. They each grabbed a steal a game but their defensive impact is wholly underwhelming each being about 1.0 or so in defensive box plus minus. For context, Braden Smith had a +4.2 in DBPM and all of National Champion UConn’s top 7 were +3.1 or better.
Finally, Freshmen are prone to weak tournament performances. The 2022-23 team was eliminated in the Round of 32 by no.6 seed Creighton and Keyonte George put up a 1-10 effort from the field for 7 points, 3 assists and 3 rebounds and saw the bench more than normal with just 25 minutes. The 2023-24 team made it three straight Round of 32 dismissals with a loss to no. 6 seed Clemson, where Ja’Kobe Walter performed better than George with 20 points but also again created nothing for his teammates with just 1 assist and went 3-9 from distance.
Look, Baylor has had good teams the past few seasons. Keyonte George, Ja’Kobe Walker, Jeremy Sochan and Kendall Brown have all been very successful. Every school and head coach would love to have this talent. My point is not that Scott Drew should start recruiting 3-Star players and developing them for 4 years. I’m saying that Freshmen as your primary option is just not a National Title winning formula.
Anthony Davis, Carmelo Anthony and Tyus Jones are the only Freshmen to win Most Outstanding Player in March Madness this century. That’s two once in a decade Freshmen in Davis & Carmelo and a guy who set the table perfectly for a loaded Duke team. So, it’s unrealistic to be a Freshman-centric team and have serious intentions in March. Now, that doesn’t mean you can’t win a National Title with Freshmen in your lineup.
Look at UConn the past few seasons. Upperclassmen anchored the production (Tristen Newton, Cam Spencer, Adama Sanogo, Andre Jackson, etc.) and elite Freshmen recruits flanked them like Donovan Clingan off the bench his first year or Stephon Castle being a 3rd, 4th, sometimes even a 5th option.
So, when I say all this and you might be thinking this whole time, “what about the highest rated recruit ever to commit to Baylor in incoming Freshmen VJ Edgecombe?” just know that how Coach Drew reacts to the past few seasons final scores will hopefully impact how he coaches this team and approaches VJ’s role.
One More Take: ’24-25 Team Breakdown
300+ teams don’t win the National Title or even make the Final Four every single season. However, three straight 2nd round exits is simply not good enough for a program of Baylor’s caliber. Scott Drew needs to throw a haymaker and remind the College Basketball multiverse that you can’t leave his name out of the best active coaches discussion.
So, how can he do that? You’re probably saying, “We get it, Freshmen aren’t good in March and their defense sucks.”
It’s easy to yell at your TV to “play defense!” and it is a lot harder to actually teach it and for it to work against this vicious collection of teams and talent in the Big 12. It’s easy for me to write about how you can’t rely on Freshmen and it is a lot harder to develop players over time to become All-Conference performers.
Final Four or even Big 12 Banners will not be raised without a return to the defensive identity that Baylor had before. That means that Drew needs to get his guards to commit to staying in front of their man and for there to be a little bit more of a presence on the interior.
Baylor’s best perimeter defender last year was Jayden Nunn and he should be a leader again this year. Duke transfer Jeremy Roach has improved steadily as a defender over his previous four years in college. 5-Star VJ Edgecombe is partially ranked so high for his absurd athleticism. He projects to be a fantastic defender creating turnovers and blocking shots with his wiry body and elite hops. Can Roach, Langston Love, Nunn and Edgecombe form an identity on the premise of perimeter defense?
What about when opponents do get downhill? Will they be afraid of going to the cup or will they make more often then they miss from 2 again? Miami transfer Norchad Omier will be a 30mpg guy, but has never been a significant rim presence against high level opponents. Can some combo of Josh Ojianwuna, freshman forward Jason Asemota, or Cal transfer Jalen Celestine bolster the rim protection next to Omier? How good could this defense have been if Yves Missi came back?
Another important factor I haven’t brought up was that the past two Baylor teams were poor rebounding teams finishing in the bottom half of the Big 12 both seasons. So, not only was their defense not great, but they weren’t limiting opponent’s possessions by creating turnovers and rebounding misses. Omier will help on the boards, but this team will need to employ some serious gang rebounding around him.
My guess is that Baylor will be better defensively, but not back to their Top KenPom status. Many people have questioned whether or not their downfall defensively ties into Jerome Tang’s departure as an assistant after the 2021-22 season to be the Head Coach at Kansas State. Can Drew turn it around and prove those speculators wrong?
Regardless of the defense, this year’s Baylor team has all the ingredients to remain a great offensive team.
All due respect to Yves Missi’s potential as a rim-running-and-protecting five in the NBA and to fan favorites like Mark Vital & Flo Thamba, Norchad Omier will instantly be the most productive big for Drew in half a decade. Omier earned 2nd-Team All ACC honors last season while averaging 17ppg 10rpg on 59.8% from 2 and 35.3% from 3. His shooting could really unlock driving lanes for Baylor’s guards.
After 108 starts at Duke it was time to move on for both parties and now Jeremy Roach gets a new lease on a new offense. Roach will bring plenty of high-level D1 experience and a new role for him should be exciting. He isn’t the only experienced guard as Jayden Nunn has nearly 100 career starts too and ready for a 2nd year Transfer leap. Langston Love made a big step last year and his sit/start decision & minute total will be interesting to see play out. Note that all three of these guards shot 42% or higher from three on decent volume.
Those three will be the primary trio of guards that will look to emulate the MaCio Teague, Jared Butler, and Davion Mitchell trio of the Title team.
Edgecombe is a wildcard. Does his talent insert him into the starting lineup and bump Love to 6th man? Can Edgecombe with his crazy athleticism work as small-ball 4 next to Omier? Can Scott Drew find a way to involve the future Top-10 pick without running his offense through him? Copying UConn’s deployment of Stephon Castle last season would be perfect.
If that lineup Roach-Nunn-Love-Edgecombe-Omier can survive on the glass and keep players in front of them defensively it could be one of the best offensive lineups in the country. Plenty of minutes will still feature some of the other forwards on the roster, but I am most interested to see if this lineup can work for Drew.
Regarless of the lineup this team has the DNA of a great Scott Drew team. An experienced collection of guards each capable of taking advantage of mismatches, a rotation of forwards ready to take flight, a highly touted NBA prospect to raise the ceiling, and now a big in Norchad Omier whose versatility can be the fulcrum to leverage the rest of the offense to an elite level.
After some poor finishes in March, I believe Scott Drew has unfinished business.
It’s easy to forget about Baylor. Between Bill Self & Kansas, Jerome Tang & K-State, Houston & Kelvin Sampson, Tj Otzelberger & Iowa State, and now Tommy Lloyd & Arizona the Big 12 has a lot going on.
But before UConn repeated as National Champs, the Big 12 had repeat National Titles with Kansas & Baylor. Dan Hurley has dominated the sport the past two seasons, but don’t confuse that with Bill Self or Scott Drew being far behind.
Jerome Tang is one of the hottest college names and his departure from Waco coincides with the defensive woes the past few seasons for Baylor. It’s easy for us to attribute past success to departing assistants. It is far from the reality. Scott Drew made the executive decisions, not Tang. Scott Drew hired Tang, yet he wasn’t the reason for the success?
This is Scott Drew. Baylor just built him and the women’s team a state of the art stadium. He just turned down the perceived biggest job in CBB when he said no to Kentucky this offseason. Baylor Bears Men’s Basketball is defined by him the same way Duke is by Coach K, Gonzaga is by Mark Few, Indiana by Bob Knight, etc. Drew has been a special coach for Baylor and I think he has something special up his sleeve.
The public needs a reminder of who Scott Drew is and just a few years removed from their TKO on the biggest stage in the sport, Baylor will once again play Gonzaga this time to kickoff the 2024-25 season.
Maybe Scott Drew can land another knockout punch this season and remind the CBB world who he is.