After the final bell rang on Saturday night and Baylor had his first loss of the season – unsurprisingly within Allen Fieldhouse, where, historically, almost all visitors lose to Kansas, especially Senior Night – Bears Scott coach Drew jumped on Zoom and summed things up perfectly.
“We had three weeks when we got worse, and they had three weeks when they got better,” said Drew. “Even Superman has kryptonite. And I think the COVID protocols are ours.”
It certainly seems so.
The final score was 71-58, the final minutes never in doubt. The Jayhawks controlled things throughout the second half, never losing the lead they held at halftime. For the second consecutive game, Baylor looked nothing like the team that started 17-0 before a 21-day break for COVID-19 problems on the show interrupting his season after a victory in Texas in early February.
Whether it is fatigue, rust or something else entirely, I will let others debate. Undeniably, however, it is something – and it is something that, among other things, transformed the best 3-point shooting team in the country into a terrible 3-point shooting team. Before their season was interrupted, the Bears were throwing the best 43.9% national in the 3-point range. In two games since the return of the three-week break, the Bears are shooting just 27.5% past the arc, meaning that an offensive thing that Baylor was great at is suddenly a disadvantage (at least temporarily).
Drew said that after the very close victory for comfort last Tuesday over the state of Iowa, most of the coaches he spoke to, who have been through what he is going through, said it takes two or three games to get right again after a long layoff. So, maybe that was expected. In any case, the dream of a national championship game between two unbeaten teams is now officially canceled forever in the last weekend of February. Baylor left Gonzaga as the only undefeated team in the country and the obvious number one on CBS Sports Top 25 And 1 in the daily ranking of college basketball. And now the question in Waco is simple: can the Bears, suddenly with a double-digit stain in their history, become a great team again?
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Top 25 and 1 Sunday rankings
The biggest drivers
7
Oklahoma State
5
Oklahoma
At the: Clemson
Outside: Tennessee