Baylor at Kansas Basketball Preview: Getting Ready for GameDay
ESPN’s College GameDay will be in Lawrence along with another top-15 team looking to get a win over the Kansas Jayhawks inside Allen Fieldhouse. Can Baylor have more success than Houston or UCONN?
Opponent Overview
Team: Baylor
Record: 17-5
KenPom: 16
Line: TBD (KenPom projects KU -3)
Team Form
Baylor in Big 12 play has been a story in three parts. The Bears opened the conference with three wins over Oklahoma State (though in overtime on the road), BYU, and Cincinnati. Then came the losing streak. Baylor dropped each of the next three: K-State on the road (in OT), Texas on the road, and TCU at home in triple overtime. Since then, BU has rattled off three straight at UCF and at home to Iowa State and Texas Tech.
Win or lose, it’s usually a close affair with Baylor. All nine of BU’s Big 12 games have been decided by fewer than 10 points. Six have been by five or fewer, and Baylor is 3-3 in those games.
Players to Watch
In what is becoming a trend at Baylor, it looks as if the Bears have another one-and-one wing playing a major role. Following in the footsteps of Kendall Brown, Jeremy Sochan, and Keyonte George, Ja’Kobe Walter has been tremendous for BU as a freshman. Walter is leading the team at 14.2 points per game while grabbing 4.5 rebounds and 1.7 assists. And what’s impressive is he doesn’t turn the ball over much for how often he has the ball in his hands. Though he hasn’t been much of a factor in this latest winning streak, scoring just eight, seven, and eight in his last three games.
Accompanying Walter in the backcourt is two-time transfer Rayj Dennis and junior Langston Love. Dennis leads the team with 6.4 assists per game (and is 19th nationally in assist rate) but can also score, averaging 13.8 points and scoring 20+ in two of Baylor’s last four games. Love has made a big jump in his third year with the program, going from 6.3 points a season ago to 11.5 this year while making 35 of 71 threes (49%). If Kansas doesn’t close out on him quickly, he could have a big day.
KU is familiar with Jalen Bridges, who is in his second year at BU after starting his career at West Virginia. He’s also a deep threat, shooting nearly 40% on 4.6 attempts per game. Meanwhile, Hunter Dickinson’s matchup will be freshman big man Yves Missi. Missi shoots nearly 64% from the field on the way to 10.8 points per game. But he excels at both grabbing offensive rebounds on one end and blocking shots on the other.
Matchups to Watch
This is nothing new: Baylor is an excellent three-point shooting team. In fact, the Bears are leading the nation at 41.2% on the year. Though that hasn’t always kept up in the Big 12 portion of the season. Baylor is 33.5% from deep in conference play (ranking seventh) and hasn’t always been consistent. Last week against Iowa State, Baylor made 12 of 23 triples. It was one of three conference games where the Bears made 10 or more threes. But then there are four occasions where Baylor shot 25% or worse from deep. It is 2-2 in those games.
The two areas where Baylor has been the best in conference play (and really all season) is grabbing offensive rebounds and getting to the foul line. We saw in the K-State game that Dickinson and KJ Adams specifically cannot afford to get in early foul trouble and will have to be as aggressive on the boards as they were against Houston.
Limiting Baylor to only one shot would be huge because Baylor hasn’t really figured it out on defense. The Bears are 11th in the conference in opponents’ effective field goal percentage and in two-point percentage and is 12th in opponent three-point percentage. If BU lets KU shoot 54% from two and 35% from three, Kansa will be tough to beat at home.
Prediction
This KU team seems to get up for big games, especially at home, and struggle on the road with limited rest. The Jayhawks had since Monday to recover and will have ESPN College GameDay on hand for the matchup. The crowd might not quite match the intensity of Houston, but you can bet the Allen Fieldhouse faithful will do everything they can to get Kansas right and back in the win column against another ranked opponent.
Baylor’s defense is down to 75th in efficiency at KenPom and that’s a big reason why I like Kansas to win again at home. There’s a chance the Bears get hot from three, but Kansas has shown that when it wants, it can keep teams off the glass and dominate inside. I like the Jayhawks to win ahead of another big road test.
Kansas 81, Baylor 74
Record ATS: 12-11
Record Straight Up: 18-5
(Last game: Kansas State 75, Kansas 70 in OT)
