Can Baylor Bears Basketball Turn Season Around?
After another heartbreaking loss, this time a 97-95 overtime thriller at the hands of the Kansas State Wildcats, the Baylor Bears and their fans are left shaking their heads as they see a 0-3 conference record next to their name.
For a team that started with a No.5 preseason ranking and was picked to win their third straight Big 12 championship, what has gone wrong?
The answer seems simple, the Bears have scored 87 and 95 points in their last two games and have lost both by a combined three points. The defense has been nowhere near the level we expect from a Scott Drew team, but it isn't the only flaw.
By the defensive numbers, there are two players who can't seem to be on the court at the same time, LJ Cryer and Flo Thamba. Cryer is still an excellent shooter and provides so much offensive value for this team, but for the minutes he is playing (30 a game), he is too much of a weak link defensively.
At 6'1" and 185 pounds, he is not as physical as Baylor's other guards and his Box +/- took a huge dip from 8.3 last year to 2.0 this season. Even his better defensive numbers from last year are a little inflated because he played hardly any conference games.
The other player who has not been the horse we expected defensively is Flo Thamba. In the 2021 title game, Thamba had Drew Timme in his back pocket and he continued that defensive dominance last season, leading many to think he would once again be the anchor in the middle this year.
So far, Thamba has regressed, with his Box +/- dropping from 4.9 to a ghastly 1.2 this season and adding seven points to his defensive rating, the highest since his freshman season.
Unlike in years past, Thamba has not had a long and physical wing defender to help his weak side. Mark Vital and Matthew Mayer were excellent off-ball defenders and had the perfect size and physicality to help on big men in the paint. Without that, Baylor has no paint deterrent, and the paint is a problem on both sides of the court.
While the Bears were only outscored 38-32 in the paint against Kansas State, they were battered down low to the tune of 52-24 against TCU the game before.
Defending the paint has been such a great skill for the Bears in years past and lacking in that aspect is bad enough, but when a team can't get to the rim offensively either, it opens you up to scoring droughts.
Wednesday night against TCU, the Bears went nine minutes without a field goal in the second half, allowing the Horned Frogs to completely erase a 17-point lead and win the game.
The good news for Bears fans is this team still has a lot of talent, and they have fought through these kinds of problems before. Last season, James Akinjo was no world-beater defensively at the same position as Cryer and they still won the Big 12 and earned a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament.
Even with those deficiencies, the talent of this team shouldn't have allowed them to drop their first three conference games, but that might actually be something positive for fans to look at.
Having the talent and having a Hall of Fame coach and three starters with national championship rings means there is a darn good chance they will figure it all out. Having the weapons they have in their arsenal, "figuring it all out" might mean a really lethal run for this team.
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