WACO, Texas — The Baylor Bears defeated the Kansas Jayhawks at the Ferrell Center in Waco, Texas on Monday, 75-69, winning their fifth consecutive game and moving to 15-5 on the year.
Baylor’s five-game win streak represents a significant turnaround after they started 0-3 in Big 12 Conference play. At the time the Bears had a pedestrian 10-5 record, although losses to unranked Marquette, Iowa State, and Kansas State all aged well, with each of those teams now occupying a spot in the AP Top 25.
Locked on Baylor host Drake Toll doesn’t think the streakiness of the Bears is anything to be alarmed about - citing the highly competitive Big 12 conference as the reason for the slump.
“This is the nature of the Big 12,” Toll told Isaac Schade on the Locked on College Basketball podcast. “I don’t know if I truly understood that until (Kansas coach) Bill Self took the podium and said basically the same thing…There’s no Louisville. There’s no Cal. There’s no any of that.”
The Big 12 currently has nine of its ten member schools ranked within the top 40 at KenPom, with only Texas Tech on the outs, and they come in at a very respectable No. 65.
Kansas is now in the midst of their own three-game losing streak, having fallen to TCU and Iowa State prior to the loss against Baylor. They have Kentucky on the road next, followed by No. 5 Kansas State, No. 12 Iowa State on the road, and then No. 10 Texas - a seemingly impossible stretch of games that could land the Jayhawks in very unfamiliar territory.
“Keep in mind, Bill Self has never in two decades at Kansas had a four-game losing streak,” Schade continued. “And in fact he’s only had four three-game losing streaks. There’s a very real possibility that Kansas could be facing that on Saturday.”
While Kansas and Baylor may have more losses than usual next to their names, the top to bottom excellence of the Big 12 will help these teams - as well as Texas, TCU, Iowa State, and others - be even more prepared for the chaos that ensues during the NCAA Tournament.