Overrated?: Is Baylor Bears Hoops For Real?
The week between Christmas and the New Year is always a slow one in the college sports cycle and is usually reserved for final tune-ups before conference hoops play and precursors to football bowl games. With the news dry as a bone, though, it's also a prime time for conjuring up some hot takes.
One such college basketball take thrown into the Twitter fire Monday was Barstool's RoundBall Podcast, where hosts Marty Mush and Jordan Bohannon put up their compelling case for why the No. 12 Baylor Bears are overrated.
The first thing that jumps off the page is just the energy these guys are bringing to the world of college basketball podcasts.
Calm down fellas, we all have whiplash just from watching this.
Mush and Bohannon burst into your AirPods with charisma bigger than Clark Griswold's Christmas tree, and put all their chips on the table so convincingly, you have whiplash just listening to it.
This time of year is always one of reflection. Reflection on the year that was, reflection on the love and relationships that are so elegantly tied together in the yuletide season, and reflection as to how on Earth Mush's first crack at a college basketball podcast was canceled by Barstool for having no significant following.
If you were waiting to hear something tangible in their arguments, we regret to inform you that - not unlike Judge Smails in another Chevy Chase classic - well, we're waiting!
Mush and Bohannon's basic point as to why the Bears are overrated is basically that they just kind of don't feel the vibes of a Final Four contender.
Bohannon says he expected Baylor to be like they were in 2020, although I imagine he was referring to the 2020-21 national championship season in which the Bears went 27-2 and wiped the floor with previously undefeated Gonzaga in the title game rather than the COVID-shortened 2019-20 season when they went 26-4. But then again it's difficult to sneak any college basketball knowledge past the former Iowa Hawkeye guard.
Bears coach Scott Drew might just owe us all an apology because his 2022-23 unit doesn't look like one of the greatest college basketball teams ever to take the court so far this season.
It is true the Bears have as many losses this year as they did in the entirety of the 2020-21 season and only have two top-15 wins this season. But that's more than the No. 6 Texas Longhorns and as many as the No. 4 Kansas Jayhawks. But maybe the schedule isn't as impressive as the one Texas has to gut through. Either way, this has all the makings of an overrated club.
The Bears are also top 10 in the nation in offensive rating and top 20 in true shooting percentage and effective field goal percentage, backing up the sentiment of the third man in, Doogs, on the podcast.
In fact, when Doogs pushes back and says he thinks Baylor could unsurprisingly make a deep run in the NCAA tournament, Bohannon says "right" to agree with him, but once again chastises the Bears for not being as good on December 26 as they were when they won the entire national championship in 2021.
Has Baylor played their best basketball yet? Almost certainly not. The good news is, Drew and his coaches haven't had a stiff test in weeks and have been able to actually work on the team's defense in practice ahead of the conference schedule which starts next week. If you think this subpar Bears defense will look the way it does now for the entire season, then you likely haven't watched Drew coach for the last...say, 20 years.
If anything, while these Bears haven't vaporized everyone in their path like in 2021, they have actually improved their already gaudy depth.
Transfer guard Dale Bonner has turned into a menace on both sides of the floor after having little to no offensive output last season. And Langston Love, who missed the entire 2021-22 season with a torn ACL and was a big question mark in terms of productivity, has been a huge spark plug off the bench. Adam Flagler is still one of the best offensive guards in the country, Keyonte George is still a legitimate lottery pick, and LJ Cryer and Jalen Bridges are starting to really rest comfortably into their roles.
Overrated? Thankfully, there is no place on the college basketball rankings scale for Mush and Bohannon's eye test. This take on Baylor's "shelf life" likely has the shelf life of a tall glass of milk.
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